10/29/03’s illustrious band:

Thanks a Million

Brought to you by my vain hopes of winning the lottery. But a girl can dream!

Let’s say I won a $50 million jackpot. Woo-hoo! I’d be set for life!

Or would I? My parents raised me to share and to give a little back to those who have given to me. So let’s see how far $50 mil really goes.

First off, I’d give $7.5M each to Mother Media and Sister-san. They deserve it. I don’t want either of them to have to worry about anything ever again. (Knowing them, however, they’d both give away all but about $10,000. But that’s their problem.) $15M down, $35M to go.

Next, I’d donate 10%, or $5M, to my favorite local nonprofit charity, and 10% to a more far-reaching project like ending world hunger. Can’t go wrong there. Good causes, good karma. That leaves me with $25M.

Let’s say I gave $1M to each of my aunts, uncles and first cousins. That’s $7M for aunts and uncles so they can all take early, worry-free retirement. Add $13M for cousins , who will use the money to pay off their student loans and educate their own children. That’s a total of $20M more kept in the family. No worries. I still have $5M.

How about $1M each for the fine institutions that provided me with an education? BFHS, USD and UMe can all name buildings after me. “Media Sensation Memorial Library” has a nice ring, doesn’t it? And I still have $2M with which to dress nice for the dedication ceremonies.

Well, hold on; let’s establish a couple scholarship funds, too. Dad would have wanted me to. That’ll cost me another $.5M, but I do value education. A third ($.5 M) of my remaining $1.5M will still be plenty to pay off Sensational Acres and set aside funds for property taxes (or even a bigger estate!), and still buy a mighty fine diamond -- er, better make that rhinestone -- tiara.

So I’ve still got $1M to retire on, which I plan to do just as soon as I cash in my ticket. I’ll probably be 35 years old by the time the paperwork is completed. Since I’ll be wealthy to afford the best medical care and long-term insurance, I expect to live at least to the age of 85 and, given the longevity of women in my family, probably beyond. That’s a minimum of 50 more years. So I can pay myself . . . $20,000 a year?

Wait a minute! That’s less money than I make now! I can’t retire on $20K a year! Whose bright idea was that?

OK, OK, so I don’t retire right away. Let’s say I work until I’m 55. I can still pay myself $33,333.33 per year. But that’s not an upper-class wage in 2003 dollars, let alone 2023 dollars. If I work ‘til I’m 65, I’ll only have to support about 20 years of retirement, at a cost to my winnings of $50,000 per year. That won’t be as much fun as retiring at 35, but I’d be bored without a job, right? Still not a grand sum, but I’ll have my 401(k) and Social Security income by then, too. Well, better not count on Social Security the way things are going. But I’ll get by.

But wait! I’ve forgotten about all my friends! The ones who have heard me say that if I become a multimillionaire, all my friends get to be millionaires, too. Let’s say I pick 10 of them to receive $1M each. Which 10, though? That’ll be a tough choice. Somebody’s going to get left out. And that $10M has to come from somewhere. Maybe I only give half a million to my aunts and uncles and cousins; that’d save $10M right there. But then they’d accuse me of valuing family less than friends, and that’s no good.

I suppose I could skip the charities, because charity begins at home, right? But that would mean bad karma for sure. Maybe if I just scale back those donations to half as much. Then I’d have $5M to give to my friends. I’d either have to give $1M to only 5 people, ticking off the rest, or $.5M to 10 people, ticking off all those who thought they’d been promised a million even. And those who weren’t sure they made the top ranks might start bumping off those higher on the list to assure themselves a spot, which would get awfully messy . . .

Forget it, you leeches! Go buy your own dang lottery tickets!

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/28/03’s illustrious band:

Chokecherry Bliss

Brought to you by the Prairie Berry Winery: South Dakota wines since 1876.

South Dakota wines? I’d never heard of such a thing, either, until my sister moved to Arizona. It’s a long way to go to learn about one’s home, I agree, but sometimes that’s what happens.

See, Sister-san and Chef Jeff got the keys to their new house last night. Their mothers had made sure that all family members had a bottle of wine to open at the appointed time to celebrate this event. Mother Media, who had recently discovered the Prairie Berry Winery, sent me a bottle of Great Grandma’s Chokecherry Bliss. So that’s how Arizona got me in touch with South Dakota wine.

Great Grandma’s Chokecherry Bliss, according to the brochure Mother Media sent with the bottle, is a “chokecherry port wine made from late harvest chokecherries. It has been fortified with kirschwasser spirits and is a premium sipping wine. Serve chilled.” Suggested food pairings are chocolate cake, mousse and cheesecake; it rates five sugar cubes out of five on the sweetness scale. The web site says that GG’s CB was awarded a bronze medal at the 2001 Indiana International Wine Competition. (Again: Indiana International Wine Competition? Who knew?)

I can personally attest to the sweetness of this wine. Five sugar cubes is maybe a little on the shy side. Still, it’s meant to be a dessert wine and fills the bill nicely -- in my humble opinion, anyway. I’ll certainly chill it now that I know. Half a glass at the end of a day really hits the spot. I see from the web site, www.prairieberry.com, that I can have mail-order wine shipped across state lines, so maybe I’ll think about expanding my wine cellar. Oh, wait, Sensational Acres doesn’t have a cellar. Well, my wine cupboard, then.

Other vintages available from Prairie Berry:

• White wines: Buffaloberry, Heritage (a semi-sweet wine made with fruity sweet pears), and Gold Digger (a sweet pear wine made with hand-picked domestic pears).

  
  

• Blush wines: Dry Wild Plum (a “dry, toasty” wine aged in French oak), Rhubarb, Raspberry Honeywine (sounds great!), Razzy Apple (apple/raspberry blend; also sounds good), and Sweet Wild Plum.

  
  

• Red wines: Wild Grape, Pheasant Reserve (made from a blend of wild grapes and chokecherries; medium-bodied with a toasty finish), Great Grandma’s Chokecherry (different from GG’s Chokecherry Bliss; only two sugar cubes), Razzy Rhubarb (raspberries and rhubarb), Chokecherry Medley (chokecherries and elderberries), Cranberry (made three-cube sweet somehow) and Concord.

  
  

• Dessert wines: Great Grandma’s Chokecherry Bliss, described above, and Fredd Red, made with fresh cherries. I’d love to try that one!

  
  

The web site tells us that Prairie Berry, like all great wineries, is founded on family tradition. The vintners are the great-great grandchildren of Czechoslovakian immigrants Josefa Pesa Kalda and Josef Kalda, who began making wines from native South Dakota berries and fruits in 1876.

See? You learn something new every day. So let’s all raise a toast to Sister-san and Chef Jeff’s new desert dwelling and newfound knowledge of dessert wine.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/27/03’s illustrious band:

Raking It In

Brought to you by my weekend.

I had a good weekend. How ‘bout you? On Saturday I attended a conference called Cashing In, which focused on ways for writers to make money. It was energizing to spend time with other writers -- especially well paid writers, especially published writers with tips on how to emulate their success. However, I seem to have missed the session on making this happen instantaneously and without much effort. But I had some fun and met some groovy people, including a woman whose book I happened to have in my car. It was definitely well worth my time.

After the conference, I hied myself to a friend’s house for something completely different: a group viewing of the Mr. Olympia contest. Yep, bodybuilding. I don’t know much about bodybuilding, so I was mostly there to rake in the chips and dip. Which I did. I was also treated to some vintage footage of famous ‘builders like Lou Ferigno and California’s new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. His overinflatedness doesn’t seem to have changed much since 1975.

And there was an interesting video from the 1980s that was as much performance art as anything else. It starred an attractive and moderately muscular woman flowing dancelike through some classic bodybuilding poses dressed only in a G-string. Reason? She wanted to impress viewers. It was an education, if nothing else, and I got to drive home in the season’s first snowfall.

After all that vicarious exertion, I spent most of Sunday reading. I dedicated a few hours, though, to raking leaves on the sprawling grounds at Sensational Acres. I have a small blister and a large pile of leaf-filled bags to show for my labors. I got a few other things tidied up, too, in preparation for winter, but to my chagrin, I found myself unable to unscrew the garden hose from the spigot. If any big strong men happen to pass through my neighborhood this week, I’ll draft them for help.

Finally, I’m pleased to report that my horoscope predicts that I will soon be raking it in. Big money and life-changing opportunities are coming my way, the seer says. If I were willing to fork over my credit card number, I could learn exactly how to handle these events. But I’m skeptical of a fortuneteller who’s depending on me for her fortune. If she can tell me how to achieve great wealth and fame, why not do the same for herself?

Speaking of achieving great things: Congrats to Sister-san and Chef Jeff, who get the keys to their new house today! Huzzah! They are now officially desert dwellers. I can’t wait to see it.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/24/03’s illustrious band:

Counting One Counting Two

Brought to you by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Lullaby, an audiobook I’ve been listening to in the car.

The premise of Lullaby is that a reporter named Streator discovers, at several infant death scenes, a poem that kills people if you read it to them. Parents have apparently been reading it to their children to lull them to sleep. It’s short, and after seeing it a few times, he memorizes it. Being a skeptical journalist, he tries it out -- on his editor. Nothing happens immediately, but the man is soon discovered dead in his apartment.

Streator realizes that he now has the power to kill with impunity, leaving no traces. (As a writer, he’s fascinated with the idea of words having such great power. Me too.) He goes on a minor killing spree, if a killing spree can be called minor. When someone bumps into him on the street while he’s having a bad day, he angrily mutters the poem. The offender drops dead on the curb. His apartment neighbors’ TVs and stereos are so loud they drive him crazy. He hollers the poem in the shower, thinking the water will cover the sound of his voice. But it carries through the vents, and people die during the night. He welcomes the quiet. A woman obstructs him when he’s in a hurry; he recites the poem silently; she keels over. Another offense; the poem flashes through his mind unbidden; another death.

Soon, however, he realizes that the killing has to stop. He has to rein his temper in. But he can’t. The deadly verse pops into his head at every annoyance, whether he intends it to or not. Suddenly the world is at the mercy of his animal urges. At first Streator was darkly amused at his ability to rid himself of human irritants. But now he’s horrified that he’s become a monster.

To distract himself when he starts to get angry, the journalist falls back on the old strategy of counting. “I’m counting one, counting two, counting three,” he says whenever something ticks him off. A paragraph later, he’s still not over it: “I’m counting four, counting five, counting six.” After a few pages, “I’m counting 61, counting 62, counting 63.” He counts and cools off, stops and starts again, over and over throughout the novel. (The author, incidentally, uses other repetitive devices, like the recurrence of certain phrases, certain thoughts, to give the book a rhythmic, lullaby-like quality.)

What interests me, for some reason, is the counting. What if Streator didn’t start counting at one with every new annoyance, but simply picked up where he left off? How high do you suppose he’d count in a day? In a week? How high would I count? How high would you? Would he have to write down his new starting number each time, or would he remember?

How long before the numbers got so large and took so long to say that he spent more time counting than doing anything else? How long before he forgot why he started counting in the first place? If he stopped counting, would he stop thinking about being angry? Or would he, without the counting, go back to being angry all the time? Is it humanly possible to never be angry, or at least to always be in control of one’s temper? Does Streator become less human for stifling those impulses, or more so?

Rambly thoughts for a rambly Friday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Right now, it’s quitting time, and I’m down for the count. What’s scrolling across your brain-screen this minute?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/23/03’s illustrious band:

Outside the Box

Brought to you by Magic, who can make boxes disappear.

“So imagine you’re sitting in a restaurant,” he says, “and the waiter asks if you’d like a box for your leftovers. What if one day you looked up at him and replied, ‘No, I’d like a mug.’?”

What if, indeed? And what if they were out of mugs? Then you’d have to ask for a basket. Or a pocketbook. Or an ice cube tray. Or a flower pot. Or a mason jar. Or a holster. Or a quiver. Or a colander. Or a sippy cup. Or a vase. Or a folder. Or a pressurized canister. Or a mesh laundry bag. Or an Erlenmeyer flask. Or an urn. Or an ewer. Or a briefcase. Or an old oaken bucket. Or a hollowed-out gourd. Or a tanned buffalo bladder. Or just stuff it into my pelican-like lower lip, and I'll be on my merry way.

Yep, I’ve been going out to eat too often lately.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/22/03’s illustrious band:

The Hippo in the Office

Brought to you by Senor Editor.

Senor Editor is an editor, and therefore a language person rather than a math person. And that’s the way he likes it. However, today he ran into a situation he thought he’d never encounter: needing, in the course of his editorial work, to employ the Pythagorean Theorem.

To review: Senor knew the length of two sides of a right triangle (a triangle in which one of the angles is a right angle) and needed to find the length of the third, diagonal side, the hypotenuse -- or, as he calls it, the hippopotamus. So it was time to trot out the dusty old “a squared plus b squared = c squared” formula. It worked, but he wasn’t happy about it.

I feel the same way when, as a history avoider, I’m forced to look up historical-type facts in the line of duty. Like the spelling of Pythagoras.

Another close encounter of the numeric kind: Last night I attended a birthday party where many humorous gifts were given. Among the best was a book titled Would You Rather . . . ?” It was full of ridiculous choices, such as:

Would you rather . . .

• . . . become increasingly intelligent as you consumed more alcohol, but also increasingly convinced you were Gloria Estefan?
  OR
  . . . completely understand Roman numerals, but also look exactly like Weird Al Yankovich?

  
  

• . . . be hole-punched to death?
  OR
  . . . be eaten alive by the cast of Dif’rent Strokes?

  
  

• . . . be stoned to death by pickles?
  OR
  . . . be submerged in mayonnaise until you drowned?

  
  

Yeah, great literature. A lot of the choices revolved around having a really cool ability of some kind but also being saddled with an embarrassing tic or appearance; most of the rest were about sex. The “Ginger or MaryAnn?” question was by far the tamest of those, and offered the unusual choice between two desirable alternatives.

So, would you rather . . .
. . . have a photographic memory but know a lot of really, really ugly people?
OR
. . . have ESP but live in Washington, D.C.?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/20/03’s illustrious band:

The Blue Earth Blues

Brought to you by Mother Media and me in our tireless search for the perfect hash browns.

Mother Media had spent a couple days in Sioux Falls with her sisters, my Media Aunties. When they left town Sunday morning to return home, Mother Media thought of squeezing in a visit with me. This wasn’t supposed to be possible; I had been expecting company for the weekend. Since that hadnt’ worked out, I was free. So we agreed to meet at the halfway point, the thriving metropolis of Blue Earth, MN, for Sunday brunch. I hopped into the Suave Samurai (my black Subaru, not to be confused with Sister-san’s black Subaru, the Phat Ninja) at 7 a.m. and hit the road.

We met at a golden-arched facility near the freeway to exchange gifts and make plans for finding real food. However, we quickly found ourselves facing the challenge of finding a small-town restaurant without a drive-thru that was open on a Sunday morning. It took several minutes of cruising around with Mother at the wheel and me on the cell phone calling various establishments.

Someone at the fourth or fifth place on the list finally answered the phone and confirmed that they were open for brunch. Living in the Big City, I’ve grown accustomed to asking whether I need a reservation, so the words slipped out before I could think the question through. The man on the phone laughed and said no, we didn’t need a reservation. We could just come right on over.

So we did amble right on over . . . and right on past. In a town that small, it shouldn’t be possible to hide a restaurant on Main Street, but we managed to miss it on our first pass. Once we’d located it, there was another moment’s confusion while the waiter/busboy/host tried to remember where the nonsmoking section was. Then we got down to serious diner business.

Except for the teenaged staff and me, Mother Media was the youngest person in the building by a good 15 years, and most of them had just come from church. In polyester-free ensembles of T-shirts and jeans, we felt a trifle underdressed, but we figured our out-of-town status gave us a good excuse.

The drinks were interesting. I got a warm, flat Dr. Pepper, and Mother Media’s coffee had been brewed with water hard enough to curdle the creamer. The food was fine, though. More than fine, actually; after polishing off my biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs and hash browns, I didn’t eat anything else that day except for a brownie.

After eating and looking at pictures, we decided we’d finish our chat outdoors in the glorious weather and set off in search of a park. The sky was a perfect autumn blue, not to be wasted. Also, Mother had a few pictures left on her camera, and you know what that means.

Again, you wouldn’t think the town could conceal a whole park from us, but it did. We saw one sign for Industrial Park, but that wasn’t the kind we were looking for. We saw another for a park boasting a hiking/biking trail, which sounded perfect for a late morning stroll. However, we found nothing but a lumpy field beside the road. There was no parking area, no picnic tables, and certainly no trails that we could see. We wandered around in the weeds for a while, bemused, but were soon driven away by bugs.

Mother Media had to begin her long drive home at that point, so we parted ways. Not sure when whether we’ll meet up again before Christmas. I just hope next time is as fun and nutritious as yesterday was.

Super congratulations to the Flaxmaster for winning second prize in the Tide All-American Soccer Family Contest! I thought her entry, consisting of a fantastic family photo and a brief essay composed in verse, deserved the grand prize. Flaxmaster just barely missed out on that $30,000 scholarship for one of her soccer-playing sons, and on the first prize of a brand new washer and dryer. However, she did receive a certified letter from Tide and a soccer gear bag valued at $70. Score!

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/17/03’s illustrious band:

Source Code

Brought to you by me. A few weeks ago I applied for a sort of writing grant -- in this case, time at a secluded retreat rather than money. As part of the application process, I had to write an essay describing how I came to be a writer. Here’s what I came up with:

Writing is not just what I do, but who I am. The written word is as clearly encoded on my DNA as my height and hair color.

My Grandma Clar was a writer, although she never described herself that way. She was merely the one who recorded the family stories; merely the one who fashioned the history of her home county into a self-published book; merely the one who wrote clever rhymes to advertise the bakery she ran with my grandfather; merely the one whose letters and postcards, read today, teach me what it was like to be a girl 70 years ago. Grandma Clar was “merely” nothing. She was a writer. She passed her gift to my father, a gifted storyteller, and on to me.

My Grandma Marie was a writer, too, though she never thought of herself that way either. But it was her newsy letters to my grandfather, stationed in Japan during World War II, that kept him connected to home. Her elegantly penned notes in birthday and Christmas cards were never complete without the latest family news and local events. Now my mother and aunts continue the tradition via e-mail and instant messages, as do their daughters and my sister and I.

My mother is a writer, although she waves off that description of herself. She always tells the complete story, whether in the lengthy letters she wrote her homesick college daughters or in jotting in her cookbook the occasions for which she makes special recipes. One of my earliest memories is of listening to Mom read the Little House on the Prairie books to me as I lay in bed, and of her writing quick diary entries on the sheets of notebook paper she used as bookmarks. Her words are still tucked between those tattered covers alongside Wilder’s. Her example showed me that actively writing stands side by side with reading; the two acts are inseparable.

So I am a writer, like the other women in my family. I’m a regularly published magazine editor. I’m an inveterate letter writer, like Grandma Marie. I’ve been a teacher, like my Aunt Jo and cousin Jami are. I publish a writing exercise in my blog each weekday and plan to collect the best of those essays into a book, like Grandma Clar did. I write down a private little piece of my life every day, like Mom did, and I instant-message my sister as she does her sisters.

Our words create our worlds, and mine is rich with stories.

E-mail the Media Sensation:BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives athttp://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/16/03’s illustrious band:

Ambigram

Brought to you by Dan Brown, author of Angels & Demons, the book he wrote before his current bestseller The Da Vinci Code.

Based on my enjoyment of The Da Vinci Code, I picked up A&D at the bookstore on the way home last night and settled in for another gripping read. I hadn’t gotten but a few short chapters into the narrative when I was introduced to the concept of the ambigram. An ambigram is a word that spells something when read from a different angle as when viewed right side up. MOW and SWIMS are one kind of ambigram. MOM is another kind; although it doesn’t spell the same thing upside down, it does spell a real word, MOM.

It takes some fancy lettering to produce ambigrams from nonsymmetrical words. It's an art form in itself, really, and hard to explain. So below is a link you can check out to see for yourself. There's a much more thorough explanation of ambigrams and a place where you can type in a word you'd like to see ambified. "BANDNAME" comes out looking mighty funky. This is a whole new twist on playing with words. Give it a try!

www.ambigram.com

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/15/03’s illustrious band:

Good Cookie

Brought to you by a couple of encouraging fortune cookies I’ve gotten recently.

Fortune cookies originated as a way to pass secret messages. When the people of Peking wanted to plan an uprising against the invading Mongols during the 13th and 14th century, they replaced the egg yolks in the middle of their New Year’s moon cakes with plans for the revolt. They succeeded; these were the instructions that coordinated the uprising that formed the basis of the Ming Dynasty.

Pretty cool, huh? What’s even cooler is the great variety of online fortune-cookie fortune generators available online. Here are two I like:

http://www.badcookie.com

http://www.meiwahrestaurant.com/fortune.htm

But why settle for an e-cookie when you can have the real thing? I hit the buffet at the Lucky Inn yesterday and was rewarded with a cookie that said, “Wish you a good health!” I’m glad my dessert wants me to be well, but just one good health? Isn’t that a bit stingy? And which one is it? Am I getting good mental health here, or good physical health, or good fingernail health, or what? This isn’t much of a fortune when you think about it; it’s not forecasting the future for me. Still, my wishes concur with my food’s on this one. I wish myself a good health, too.

Today’s cookie (yes, I went out for Chinese food for lunch two days in a row) said, “Your determination will lead to success.” Now that’s more like it: a truly predictive pastry. Again, I wish it had been more specific about how much determination we’re talking about here, and when and where and in what form the success will materialize. But that might be asking too much from a strip of paper that small.

I think I’ll give out fortune cookies on Halloween this year. They’re more diet-friendly than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and better conversation starters.

What’s the best cookie you ever got? And what does it mean when you receive an empty cookie?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/14/03’s illustrious band:

House Day

Brought to you by the residents of Sensational Acres.

Yesterday marked the personal holiday I call House Day: three years since I moved to Sensational Acres, my sprawling country estate. Three years! It doesn’t seem like that long at all . . . just a lifetime. Moving to this house -- it’s a home now -- marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. It’s been, on the whole, a sweet one.

Three years. That’s 36 months, 156 weeks, or 1095 days. Here’s an approximation of some of the things I’ve gone through in that time:

• Garage doors: 2. The original -- the one that had been there since the garage was built in 1949 -- bit the dust this past spring and had to be replaced, so I’m on my second one. And in case you’re wondering, the breakdown was due to mechanical failure, not user error.

  
  

• Window screens: 3 or 4. One of the cats (the lighter one, ironically) has pulled several mesh squares loose from their frames by hooking his claws into them and trying to climb them. I’m getting tired of having them replaced. Apparently I need to find a better repair person, because I’ve known of many screens that survived climbing cats without ever giving way.

  
  

• Swingin’ parties: 2. I threw myself a housewarming party on Labor Day weekend of 2001, near the first anniversary of House Day, and another this past Fourth of July weekend. Why so few? Though I have a big yard (big enough, Lightbringer says, for an orienteering meet) and plenty of friends, it seldom occurs to me to combine them. I have, however, hosted numerous visitors in ones and twos.

  
  

• Backyard bonfires: about 6. I’ve built fires in the backyard pit for each of the swingin’ parties, and I’ve burned a few piles of yard rubbish on my own. I need to do one more this fall before snow flies to get rid of some fallen tree branches.

  
  

• Bottles of vodka: 0.5. I bought one for the last swingin’ party and haven’t finished it yet.

  
  

• Boyfriends: Mind your own business.

  
  

• Martial arts promotions: 2. I was named a lineage-holder of my T’ai Chi style during the Chinese New Year celebration of 2001, and I earned a blue belt in jujutsu last November. I’m still doing T’ai Chi, but I gave up jujutsu for Lent this spring and never went back.

  
  

• Parents: 1. One of the few bad things that has happened since I moved to Sensational Acres is the passing of my Dad on January 29, 2001. He only got to see my house once, the weekend I moved in. He brought me a small kit of tools as a housewarming gift and walked around the place looking for screws to tighten while Mom and I unpacked the kitchen. I wish he could see my home now, tidy and warm and full of family mementos. I can still picture him sitting in the chair by the window, smiling across the living room and telling me I chose well.

  
  

• Grandparents: 2. Both of my grandmothers have passed away in the past couple years, Grandma Clar just before 9/11 and Grandma Marie this past summer. Neither of those great ladies ever got to visit my house, although they heard plenty about it and saw the many pictures Mother Media provided. They probably wouldn’t understand the shrine to electronic equipment slowly taking shape in my home office, nor the deplorable state of my flowerbeds. Still, I think they would have approved.

  
  

• Rolls of TP: about 234. That’s assuming an average usage rate of 1.5 rolls per week. Consumption is higher when I have company, but lower when I’m out of town, so I figure it evens out.

  
  

• Garbage bags: about 200. I take out the main household trash every Sunday evening and empty the smaller trashes on an as-needed basis. I just bought a box of 55 tall kitchen garbage bags that I expect to last nearly a year.

  
  

• E-mail addresses: at least 6. There’s an address I retired, and the one that goes with the dial-up ISP I no longer use now that I’ve got DSL. I have two addresses at work, one that’s mine and one for a general mailbox I’m responsible for policing. And I have two private addresses, one for everyday use and one for BND. I also have three phone numbers (home, work and cell) and two mailing addresses (home and work). So don’t complain that you can’t get ahold of me.

  
  

• Houseplants: about 7 -- and they’re all still alive! Until moving to Sensational Acres, I considered myself possessed of a brown thumb. However, my little green friends seem to be doing just fine these days. It probably helps that I’ve developed a near-foolproof system for remembering to water them: I simply do it whenever I’m on the phone to Mother Media.

  
  

• Journal pages: around 1,500. I usually hand-write about one page per day, sometimes less, often more. There are no great writerly revelations to be found here; mostly I just jot down whom I talked to and what I need from the store. It’s either that or talk to the cats even more than I already do.

  
  

• Band Names of the Day: about 430. I started saving my BND essays a few months after I moved to Sensational Acres, and I was astounded to count that many as I archived them over the weekend. Please don’t ask me to remember what all of them are about! However, if you have favorites, let me know. Maybe I’ll compile a “best of” anthology for my 500th BND.
  

So, happy House Day, everyone. As you can see, I’ve been busy. What have you-all been up to?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/13/03’s illustrious band:

Furphy

Brought to you by A Word A Day (www.wordsmith.org) and my weekend adventures with technology.

Furphy (rhymes with Murphy) means a rumor or false story. According to AWAD: “From John Furphy, an Australian blacksmith and engineer, who designed a galvanised iron water-cart on wheels, displaying the name FURPHY in large letters. In World War I the Army bought many Furphy water and sanitation carts for camps in Palestine, Egypt and Australia. When soldiers gathered around them, the carts became centers of gossip.”

“Plug and play,” the phrase used to describe how you should be able to plug in a new computer device and immediately begin playing with it, is a furphy. It’s never plug and play. It’s plug and uninstall and reinstall and download and uplink and call tech support and curse fluently in a variety of languages and yell at the cat, then play. If you’re lucky. Ah, computers. Life with these labor-saving devices is never easy.

Warning: Geek-speak ahead.

I'd been wanting a printer/copier/fax/scanner combo for a while and finally got around to pricing them last week. It also developed that I would need a multi-port USB hub if I wanted to hook up both the printer and my high-speed DSL modem at the same time, and I'd need a new USB cable to do that. I was also introduced to the flash memory disk for archiving and decided I could use one of those, too.

I went back to Best Buy yesterday and bought all those things, along with a power strip, since my home office room has only one outlet. Silly 1949 construction! But I hauled the computer into that room anyway -- and discovered that my Internet connection no longer functioned the same way it had in the living room. Qua? I had to call Qwest support, and they walked me through the process of reminding the computer to use the DSL connection as its default, not the old dial-up. Why this happened in one room but not the other, I still don't know.

I thought I'd try the flash memory first and archive all 428 of the BNDs I’ve produced over the past couple of years. But even though the package said plug and play, I plugged but could not play. My 5-year-old laptop didn't have the right device drivers installed and therefore didn’t know what to do with the new device. Since I'd finally gotten myself back online, I went to the flash memory manufacturer's web site to download and install the appropriate driver. (In the course of doing this, I also downloaded several fixes/upgrades for my Windows and Explorer software, which took nearly half an hour.) Once I finally figured out that the memory disk was indeed working, I was able to archive quite a lot of material. It’s good to have backup.

Then it was time to try the USB hub. Again, I plugged but got no play. The setup wizard walked me through a process of looking for device drivers in all the wrong places. No luck, and no luck with the customer support line (closed weekends). Also no luck on the hub maker’s web site, where I was informed that if I was running Windows 98, I already had the drivers on my computer. But if I already had them, why weren't they working?

Back to the setup wizard. This time, instead of telling it where to look for drivers, I didn't specify a location -- and lo and behold, it found what it was looking for without me! Silly me, trying to follow directions. The drivers did indeed reside in my computer, they just hadn't been awakened yet. With that done, I found that I could plug in both my modem and my flash memory, so I figured it would work for the printer, too.

At last I hauled the big, pretty, shiny, surprisingly lightweight unit out of its box and plunked it down on the filing cabinet. Nothing smells quite like new electronics. Or comes with as much Styrofoam packing material.

This unit, to my great relief, really did plug and play: As soon as I plugged it in I was able to make photocopies (black and white or color) and scan documents. The fax function seemed to be working fine, too, but since I didn't have anyone to fax to, I haven't tried it yet. Once I fed the computer a setup CD, I was able to print from the computer as well. I discovered that I can even edit the text of scanned documents if I use the optical character recognition (OCR) function. That's pretty cool.

With all the furphies debunked, and my entire Sunday afternoon devoured, I’m finally happy with my setup. But don’t let the packaging fool you. To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and marketing materials.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/10/03’s illustrious band:

Michelle Michelle Musally

Brought to you by WhoSEZ and one of her college professors.

When WhoSEZ was in school, she had a professor who always called his students by their full names and always said the first name twice. "John, John Doe? Jane, Jane Smith?" Some names, when repeated according to this formula, rolled off the tongue more mellifluously than others did. Michelle, Michelle Musally was one of them.

This story, repeated over dinner at the incomparable Sahib's, which is where God would go for Indian food if He were in town, reminded me of a few more teacher tales from my undergraduate days. There was, for instance, an instructor whom I heard some friends of mine, normally considerate young women, refer to as Harelip. After hearing them say this a couple times, I scolded them for making fun of someone's physical deformity. They looked at each other blankly, then burst out laughing. They were talking about their German teacher, Herr Lipp.

Oh.

Then there was Dr. H, an English professor known best for relating every work of literature and topic of conversation to the Vietnam War. Students wryly appended "and the Vietnam Experience" to the names of all the courses he taught.

Well, one semester I was taking Victorian Poetry and the Vietnam Experience. The class convened at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m., and it's already been established here that I am not a morning Media Sensation. It was a winter course, held in the basement of an old stone building on the east edge of campus in a classroom next to the boiler room. As Dr. H explicated in the front of the room and heater radiated through it, I began to doze.

Are you familiar with the phenomenon of napjerk? That's when you're nodding off, head drooping forward, then suddenly yank your head upright. I was sitting in the very back row of the class, and I napjerked so hard that I whacked my head against the cinder block wall behind me. I was more surprised than injured by the impact -- until Dr. H interrupted his lecture to ask if I was OK. Then I was mortified.

And then there was Dr. B. Dr. B was renowned in the academic community for his expertise on the Salem witch trials, but he was infamous on campus for casting a spell of a different sort. He apparently washed neither his body nor his clothes, resulting in B.O. of epic proportions.

Dr. B's students always hoped his classes would be held in long, narrow lecture halls so they could crowd to the back, at a safe distance from the deadly funk. Inevitably, however, he always seemed to end up teaching in wide, shallow rooms. People would sit at one edge of the room or another, hoping he would deliver his wisdom from front and center. Unfortunately, Dr. B liked to pace back and forth in an effort to address all parts of the room, wafting his personal cologne across the entire space. It was a little easier to take during warm weather, when we could open the windows, but during the winter, when the buildings were all closed up . . . well, you saw a lot of students sitting in class with scarves over their noses. And we would all rather have failed the course than enter his office for a meeting.

My favorite, however, might have been a sociology professor whose name escapes me. This kind and earnest man taught a summer school class called Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice and was bewildered that no one signed up for the end-of-term barbeque at his house.

Ah, school days. Bring back any favorite/least favorite teacher memories? Share them with the class.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/09/03’s illustrious band:

Listen = Silent

Brought to you by the Internet Anagram Server / I, Rearrangement Servant at www.wordsmith.org.

The words listen and silent are anagrams of each other -- that is, they contain the same letters, which can be rearranged to spell different words. The cool thing about these two words is, instead of one sequence being a real word and the other a collection of shorter but unrelated words, listen and silent have roughly equivalent meanings. Same goes for Internet Anagram Server and I, Rearrangement Servant, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Check the Hall of Fame section on the web site for more examples. Among them you’ll see:

• Software = Swear Oft
  
• Statue of Liberty = Built to Stay Free
  
• Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one (my personal favorite)
  

See? The verbal equations balance, just like mathematical equations can. Isn’t that cool? Of course, when mathematical equations balance, when each side is equal to the other, the two sides cancel each other out and the problem is solved. Then it goes away.

My friend Magic asked me the other day whether this concept can be enlarged to encompass the concept of life in balance: If you balance the various aspects of your life, such as work and home or mental and physical, does that mean your “problem” is solved? And if so, do you then . . . go away?

Leave it to a magician to ask such a question. Magicians are the only ones who know where people go when they disappear, and they’re not telling. But if I’m silent and I listen, maybe I can figure it out for myself -- and then POOF! I’m outta here.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/07/03’s illustrious band:

The Idea

Brought to you by my literary hero, James Lileks (www.lileks.com).

The Idea. Everyone has had an Idea. It’s the eureka, the light bulb, the aha moment, the problem-solving notion that occurs to you while you’re brushing your teeth. You’ve been fretting for weeks about what to get Aunt Mabel for Christmas, or you can’t figure out why the computer keeps crashing. Suddenly you have the Idea! It’s obvious, it’s perfect, and you’re good to go. You can relax.

Artists’ lives revolve around Ideas. We sit and wait for the Idea to arrive the way expectant parents wait for the stork. It could be a word, a color, a shape, a sound, a sweep of the arm, a punchline, anything. Anything! As long as it comes and fills the terrifying blank canvas.

The Muse, the Idea delivery girl, can be either stingy or generous, but you never know which it’s to be until you sit down to work. Some days she drops off a bulk shipment and you use up a whole pad of Post-It notes cataloging them. And some days, or weeks, or months, she doesn’t come by at all. The blank canvas, fed on nothingness, swells bit by bit until it blots everything else from sight, even jams the window through which the muse usually enters. Then you’re blocked. Blocked artists are obliged to hide in coffee houses, muttering into newspapers and hoping the Muse slips something under the door while they’re out.

How we court the Muse! We lay out treasures for her like cookies for Santa: the fresh pen, the sable brushes, the cup of fragrant tea. We perform the rituals: log in, stretch out, play scales, take breaths. We observe the superstitions: light a candle, turn off the phone, tilt the lucky hat just so. If we do everything just so and the Muse is pleased, the Idea arrives. Relief! The most difficult aspect of creation is over.

And then it’s time to get down to work.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/05/03’s illustrious band:

13311

I can't believe I ran the whole thing.

4:30 a.m. The alarm is set to go off 15 minutes from now, but I'm wide awake. This is an indication of how nervous I am about the big race. It's irrational to be this worked up about it. I'm not competing or trying to set any kind of a record today; my goal is simply to finish and get the T-shirt. But I've been jittery all weekend.

I shower and dress: Good cotton athletic socks, tights that come down past the knee, sports bra, spandex tank top for warmth, long-sleeved shirt bearing the T'ai Chi studio logo, my race number carefully pinned to the front. I'll add running shoes, sweat pants and sweatshirt as I head out the door. I make a sandwich and try to force a few bites down so I'm not starting the Twin Cities 10-Mile Run on empty.

I check my drop bag and waist pack again, even though I made sure of their contents last night. Hat and energy bars in the former for after the race; ID, bank card, cash, sunglasses and mini energy bars in the latter. Car keys, too, while I'm running.

I drive to St. Paul in the dark and park my car in a deserted ramp. I climb aboard the bus that will ferry runners to the starting line in Minneapolis. Sitting amidst sleek, sinewy marathoners, I feel like a mastiff among greyhounds. I swallow a few more bites of food.

It takes a long time to get from one downtown to another on the bus, but in a couple hours I'm going to cover this distance on foot. What have I gotten myself into? Now I begin to doubt myself. Am I wearing socks? Touch both ankles. Cottony. Good. Dear God, am I wearing my tights, or will I remove my sweatpants and bare my bottom to the world? Hike my pantleg to check for tights. They're there.

The bus empties us at the Metrodome, home of the Twins and the Vikings. It's just after 6:00. I queue up for the restroom immediately; I've been doing a good job of hydrating since yesterday, and excitement is putting a squeeze on my bladder. Tales of elite marathoners losing bladder and bowel control under the stress of their arduous race are common. At least I know this fate won't befall me. I spend the hour before starting time pacing up and down the concourse, stretching, peering into the black pit of the stadium.

When it's time to go, about 3,000 runners with purple number bibs pinned to their chests crush toward a single revolving door. (There are 3,634 10-milers altogether, but some of them were already outside.) We take our sweatclothes-stuffed drop bags to the trucks that will haul them to the finish line, then crowd into the street to await the official start. With no idea what I'm doing, I simply follow the crowd.

I make a new friend as we line up: Carol, a high school guidance counselor who is also running her first 10-mile. We agree to stick together until I have to drop to a walk. Both of us are nervous. I don't remember being this uptight since my wedding day -- seven years ago today. I realize I've forgotten to bring my cell phone, so I won't be able to call Mom from the finish line.

At last we're off! As soon as we start moving, I feel better. So does Carol. We stamp deliberately on the special mat that marks the starting line. The mat scans the computer chips tied to our shoelaces to record our official start times. Another mat at the other end will clock our finish times, and we'll be able to check our results online by the end of the afternoon.

The pack trots toward the river and sunrise. All around me, runners remark that the weather could not be better: temps in the 50s, brisk and clear, no wind. There's even a little fall color on display. At mile marker 1, just off West River Road, an ensemble of Taiko drummers dressed in black tunics with flames at the bottom are putting their backs into in inspiring cadence. Turning to look back at them, I almost trip and run into Carol.

The next couple miles pass pleasantly along the river flats. As people warm up, they throw the old socks they've been using as mittens to the side of the road. At 2.75 miles, we tackle our first hill as we ascend from the lowlands to Franklin Avenue Bridge. This spot marks mile 19 of the full marathon route, which merges with the 10-mile route from here on out. The marathoners start at 8:00, which is just about now, so none of them have reached mile 19 yet. We thunder across the bridge into my old neighborhood and continue down East River Road, still paralleling the Mississippi.

We admire the beautiful riverside homes for another couple miles, residents coming out onto manicured lawns to cheer us. I accept a paper cup of blue Powerade from a volunteer. After slopping the first gulp all over my face, I quickly learn the trick of folding the cup's brim into a spout for easier pouring. Runners try and fail to toss their empties into the trashcans, but more volunteers, armed with huge push brooms, sweep them out of the way. A few people stop to use the porta-potties. A few more avail themselves of the thick underbrush on the riverbank.

Around mile marker 4 we encounter another incline, longer but less steep than the last. At mile 5, I break out in smiles. This is a personal best for me; my longest training run was 4.25 miles, and that was weeks ago. A former sprinter who protested any distance greater than 220 yards, I never thought I could run this far. Whatever else happens, my day is already a success.

At mile 5.5, we hit the long, straight stretch of Summit Avenue, lined on either side with some of St. Paul's grandest homes, including the governor's mansion. I had somehow managed to forget the fact that moving from west to east, as the race route does, Summit is mostly uphill. The slope is not steep, but it's steady. Spectators ring cowbells, bang tambourines, hold up handmade signs, and assure us that we're almost at the top. Four miles later, they'll finally be right.

Just before we reach mile marker 6, my right shoe comes untied. I have to stop and redo it. Carol says she'll see me later, but I knot it quickly and catch back up to her in a few strides. I slap hands with some kids standing along route cheering. They think they've touched a real athlete. I swerve to the side to touch the mile marker. This may be the last one I pass at a run.

But no! I'm still jogging as I touch markers 7 and 8, too. This is amazing! But the hill is getting steeper.

By now, the back of my left knee is a little sore, nothing to worry about. The outside of my right knee, however, has begun to ache in earnest. When I tried running for exercise last year, this same problem convinced me to stick to jumping rope. This year I've worked at strengthening my knees by doing squats and plenty of stretches. The effort has paid off, since I've made it this far. And I'm not breathing nearly as hard as I would have expected, had I expected to run this far without walking, which I did not. Maybe . . . ?

As mile 9 concludes, we finally crest the hill and are rewarded with a splendid view of St. Paul laid out below us. An official with a loudspeaker urges us on from a flatbed blasting "Eye of the Tiger," the fight song from Rocky. We raise our arms in the air -- briefly! -- and set our sights on the St. Paul Cathedral. Once we pass that massive grey stone church, it's only about another quarter of a mile, all downhill, to the finish line. And I'm still running!

The end is in sight! Just beyond the church, Carol and I pass beneath the huge American flag strung up overhead between two construction cranes. Crowds line the homestretch. Music and announcers' voices blare from loudspeakers. Photographers park themselves in our path, hoping for that one great shot. We smile for all of them. I'm striding out like I've got energy to spare.

I do my best tape-breaking lean as I cross the finish line beside Carol, even though the tape was broken long before I got here. Who cares? I got here! I have run 10 whole miles in about 1 hour and 50 minutes and am still standing up. I have won. I have won.

A race volunteer drapes a thin foil blanket around me so my damp body won't lose too much heat in the autumn chill. I clutch it around my shoulders like Superman's cape. I bow to another volunteer, who solemnly places a medal around my neck, confirming my championship status. Carol and I part with a high five. It's a good thing I didn't bring the cell phone. I wouldn't know what to say.

I stumble down the goodie gauntlet toward the sweats retrieval area, collecting my finisher's T-shirt, a banana, a bottle of water, a fruit cup and a small can of pineapple juice along the way. Yet another volunteer scurries to fetch the bag with my race number on it. Standing in the middle of the capitol mall, I strip off my wet black T-shirt and replace it with my new, dry blue one. Before putting my arms through the sleeves, I pull off the straps of my undershirt so I can work it down over my hips like a tube top. Miraculously balanced, I pull warm, dry sweatpants on over my tights. Sweatshirt and cap top it all off.

I wander through the post-race party tent in a daze, suddenly almost sick with hunger as the smell of pizza hits my nostrils. I acquire mini Salted Nut Rolls, more pineapple juice, a Coke and a breakfast burrito along with my slice. I eat the pizza and burrito slowly, carefully, in case my overtaxed metabolism should decide to rebel. It doesn't, and after a few minutes of sitting down, I regain the ability to think.

I make it back to the finish area just in time to see the first few wheelers, in streamlined racing wheelchairs and cycling helmets, whiz across the line. Fantastic. Then the overall marathon winner comes roaring home. He's a masters division runner, age 42. The second-place finisher is also in the masters division. The first-place female marathoner is a few minutes behind them. They all look like they could go out and run another 26.2 miles.

The announcer comments that these elite runners maintain a pace of about 6 minutes per mile over their entire course. I compare that to my pace of around 11 minutes per mile. They run nearly twice as fast as I do, 2.62 times as far.

Realizing this makes me tired for real, so I head up the lawn to the bus that will return me to my car. I'm home by 11:30, still soaking in jasmine-scented bubblebath at noon. I'll accomplish little else today besides reporting my adventures and folding some laundry. But that's OK. I've done much more than I expected to already.

My Official Twin Cities 10-Mile Results

bib number: 13311
age: 34
gender: F
overall place: 3148 out of 3634
division place: 354 out of 440
gender place: 1814 out of 2206
time: 1:51:40
pace: 11:10
chip time: 1:49:10

For somebody who didn't even expect to run the whole race, I'm a little dissatisfied with my stats. I'll do better next year.

Congrats also to El Queso Grande and Ms. Wild Rice, who completed the State Capitol 5K Race on Saturday. Way to kick (and haul) butt, Health & Wellness crew!

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/03/03’s illustrious band:

Park & Writhe

Brought to you by downtown St. Paul.

I ventured into downtown St. Paul this afternoon to pick up my race packet. I'm entered in the 10-mile event connected with the Twin Cities Marathon, both of which will be run on Sunday. Or, in my case, both run and walked.

So first I had to make sure I was heading to the correct large arena-type venue; I made it all the way to St. Paul before realizing I wasn't sure whether I needed to be there or in downtown Minneapolis. This required a phone call back to the office, where El Queso Grande graciously looked it up for me. I was in the right town. So far, so good.

As I was pulling into the parking ramp across from the hockey shrine, I saw the sign that demanded $10 just for entry. Whoa! I had $2 and some pennies. I had to 'fess up to the attendant, who allowed me to turn around and go right back out, despite signage to the contrary. Again, a lucky break.

Well, that's where my luck ran out. I don't get to the downtowns much, so I don't know where the ATMs are. I drove a few blocks and pulled over, figuring I'd have a better chance on foot. (Since it was just after 4:30, I didn't have to plug the parking meter, so I suppose that was lucky, too, given my lack of change.) One of the first stores I passed was a non-chain coffee shop that had an ATM right in the front window. What luck!

It turned out to be bad luck; the machine wasn't working. However, I got a fantastic oatmeal cookie just when I needed it most, so I guess that's OK. The coffee shop lady directed me to a nearby convenience store.

Convenience stores aren't quite as convenient in downtown StP as they are in the suburbs, I'm sorry to say. For one thing, the twisting one-way streets don't lead right to them. You have to go around a few blocks. But finally I found the store and went in . . . where the ATM rejected my card. "Your transaction is not available at this time."

So it was off to the next C-store, across the bridge. But that ATM rejected my card, too. It was turning out to be a rather rotten afternoon . . . until I realized I'd been swiping the wrong card, which explained the problem at the first store. Lucky I saw that, or I might have tried to check out a library book with my Visa.

Exiting the C-store in heavy traffic was a tricky affair, made simpler by the fact that only right turns were allowed. I, of course, wanted to go left. But what the heck. Up the hill, across two lanes, and a Burger King turnaround later, I was back on track. A few more one-way streets and I was back in the shadow of the hockey temple.

It was only then that I noticed another parking ramp right next to the $10-or-die ramp. This one offered hourly rates, so after waiting 5 minutes to make yet another left turn, I finally got in. Parked, made it across the street to race HQ, picked up my materials, and was back in the car in about 23 minutes flat. Which was lucky, because it took me a full 5 minutes just to wend my way down and around and down and around and down and around and finally OUT of the parking structure.

Total charge for 28 minutes of parking: $1. Had I noticed the alternative ramp first, I could have accomplished my mission in a quarter of the time. Luckily, I still had plenty of time to get home before my friends arrived to meet me for dinner. And I needed every minute of it, because if you think parking in downtown St. Paul is tough, you should try getting out.

The 10-mile run will be a piece of cake after this. Wish me luck!

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/02/03’s illustrious band:

Mad Dog Charging

Brought to you by Jacque the writing coach.

"If the mad dog comes at you, whistle for him."

That's a bit of advice given Ms. Jacque by a writing teacher she had that she has passed on to her own students. If the mad dog comes at you, whistle for him. If the thing you fear comes at you, call it closer.

It really hit home when she said it tonight. It's not as if I've never heard this advice before. Kung fu guru Master Choi Wai-lun has been saying it for years, but he puts it this way: "You got to say fighting is your faaavorite thing, like chocolate." It even came up in the awareness seminar I attended over the weekend, wherein we identified things that we were fearing or resisting and deliberately chose to invite them into our lives. The goal is to demystify the scary thing by hauling it in for a good, close look.

Mad dogs? I've got a pack of them. There's chaos when I would prefer order. Uncertainty when I want long-range plans. Molasses incomprehension where I wish for quicksilver wit. Magic when I want science, and science on days I'm looking for a little magic. Choosing to lay it all on the line instead of saving face.

Well, I'm laying it on the line today, folks. I'm here to admit to you all, out loud and in public, that I am an essayist trapped in a journalist's body. I have a good job writing for a good magazine, but what I really want to do is sit around making stuff up like I'm doing right now. Maybe I'll publish a collection of essays or become a columnist, or both. I'm even taking baby steps toward making these things happen. And it's a damn scary prospect, because each step takes me a wee bit farther from the security of familiar territory. But it's got to be done, or I won't be being my best and truest self.

So you can all light candles and say prayers for me, or whatever it is you do to spread good vibes. (And don't worry, I'm keeping my day job.) I'll do the same for you as you pursue your dreams. What are they?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

10/01/03’s illustrious band:

Spambassador

Today’s reading is our monthly reading from the Book of Spam.

Did you know there’s such a thing as a Spammobile? Of course there is. Looks like a can of you-know-what on wheels, with a great big smiley face painted on the front. Here’s what the experts have to say about this latest development in processed meat motility:

“The touring representative of Spam-laden goodwill, the Spammobile tours concerts, sporting events, fairs, and other events in the United States. This amazing vehicle was created from a trolley car chassis in Fresno, CA; it is the world’s first Spam luncheon meat can on wheels.

“Highly trained Spambassadors travel with the vehicle, which is also a mobile kitchen. They prepare and serve miniature Spamburger Hamburgers to the waiting crowds at each stop.

“As of May 2002, three Spammobile vehicles have been touring the nation. If you haven’t been lucky enough to find one in your area, pictures and a schedule of future appearances are available on the Spam website -- www.spam.com.”

Highly trained Spambassadors? There’s a resume-builder of a job for you. I wonder what Spambassador training consists of, and how long it takes. What are the qualifications? “Successful applicant will possess strong customer-service skills and desire to bring the joy of jelly-covered meat byproducts to the people. Must have valid driver’s license.”

Spambassadors probably have to memorize long lists of facts about Spam and attend seminars on the importance of positive attitudes and good air fresheners. They also have to learn how to prepare and serve miniature Spamburgers to waiting crowds, requiring crossover skills in the food service area. And I’m sure there’s at least one anger management course in there for the days when people just won’t quit cutting off the Spammobile on the freeway.

Suddenly my friends’ stints as Chuck E. Cheese and the Easter Bunny are sounding pretty glamorous. Even my ill-fated summer job at Wall Drug (546.31 miles from Sensational Acres) stacks up pretty favorably compared to Spambassadorship. Of course, I didn’t get to drive the company car.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.