04/29/03’s illustrious band:

A Farm of Dogs

Brought to you by schoolkids’ art.

I spent Easter weekend away from home, so when the big day arrived, we located a nearby church to attend services. The church we chose had a school attached, and we found ourselves walking down a long hallway lined with children’s artwork. Some of the projects had religious themes, like the gathering of construction-paper sheep following their Holy Shepherd. Someone had taped up the poor beasts nose-to-tail, and all of Jesus’ flock appeared to be sniffing one another’s butts.

There was also a Shroud of Turin project, in which kids had drawn portraits of Jesus on scraps of cloth to represent the Shroud. Clearly all the artists worked from the same picture of Jesus, since the drawings resembled each other quite a lot. However, there was still room for individual variances of style. Some Jesuses had long curly hair and full beards and moustaches, while others were clean-shaven. Hipster Jesus had a goatee, Amish Abe Jesus had only a beard, and Trucker Jesus sported a handlebar ‘stash that covered most of the canvas. Then there was Ponytail Jesus, whose hair sprouted from a tight bunching at each side of his head. And who knows, maybe He did look like all these portraits at different times, to different people. One thing all the drawings had in common, though: He was smiling in each and every one.

The wall of color studies showed a more open-ended assignment. The children had evidently been instructed to choose a color, then draw a picture incorporating that color in context. So we saw the usual examples, like “Green is grass,” illustrated by a lush meadow, and “Red is apples” above several bright fruits. Among the less usual examples: “Brown is logs floating on the water” and “Orange is a penguin’s feet,” in which the penguin frolicked happily in a field of flowers and trees. The family favorite was “Brown is a farm of dogs,” and sure enough, next to the red barn danced a pack of happy dogs.

What’s brown where you live?

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04/28/03’s illustrious band:

The Numbers Game

Brought to you by my attempt to refinance my mortgage.

I’m refinancing the mortgage on Sensational Acres. It’s a smart thing to do, they tell me; I’ll pay less interest for less time, and as a bonus I’m also paying off the car loan. I’ll end up keeping significantly more money at home each month.

So why doesn’t this feel like fun?

My blood pressure is on a roller coaster here. I keep being asked to prove things that should already be a matter of record and to provide documentation of the proof, and to provide the documents, too. To wit (or witless, as I’m fast becoming):

• First came bunch of faxing and e-mailing of information back and forth. A slow start, not too tough. I abused company e-mail and fax equipment.
  
• Next I had to schedule an appraisal of the house and rush home on a lunch hour to let the appraiser in. He spent approximately 3.5 minutes on the property and left. I had to deal with bad traffic and was late getting back to work.
  
• Then there was a wrangle over a long-defunct bank account shared by El Pendejo and me. He’s the one who declared bankruptcy, but since my name was tied to his on that account, I’ve had to beg my bank (during work hours, of course) to provide my refinancing processor with a letter stating my noninvolvement in the bankruptcy, so the processor can pass it along to the title company before closing. Which is this Friday.
  
• Then there was the whole Green Albatross thing with the sale of the pickup, which I had to explain and document. That ate up a good couple hours of my business day, too.
  
• And while we’re on the subject of my ex-husband, I was informed last Friday that I need to provide the title company with a certified copy of the divorce decree so they can be good and satisfied that I’m not married to a bankrupt individual nor responsible for his debts.
  Well, you can’t just call up Divorce Decrees R Us and ask for a copy to get transferred. I called the attorney who handled my case, who eventually called me back with the information that I’d need to get my copy from the Family Court Justice Center. So I called the FCJC to make sure they had my document on file; finding it missing wouldn’t have surprised me. But it’s there.
  Can they send a copy to the title company? Sure, but please allow 2 to 4 weeks for mailing, once the request is processed. That’s no good; closing is Friday, and the title company needs the decree in hand before then. So I have to go fetch it myself -- there’s a fee, of course -- which means driving into downtown tomorrow morning, finding and paying for parking, spelunking through the bureaucracy and overnight-mailing it to the title company. (I think I’ll get a copy for myself, too, just in case.) I’m definitely going to be late for work. But OK, I’ll do it.
  
• I got a letter from the title company last week instructing me to bring various other things to closing, too. Like a cashier’s check for a huge amount of money. My processor had told me I wouldn’t need to write anyone any checks that day, so naturally I panicked. Called the processor. Was reassured that I really don’t need to bring a big check, that part of the title company’s form letter didn’t apply to me. OK, sigh of relief.
  
• The letter also instructed me to provide some information about my homeowner’s insurance — information I didn’t have on hand, and which I did not know where to find. Another call to the processor. Relax, she said, it’s already taken care of.
  
• But it wasn’t; half an hour later, the processor called back all apologetic; seems I needed to call the insurance provider, request some adjustments, and have the insurance company fax info back to the processor. Which I did. During work hours.
  
• The letter also instructed me to bring a list of my addresses for the past 10 years. That was the easiest part of the whole deal so far. I’ve had 5 addresses in the past 10 years, but I remembered them all well enough to go to the U.S. Postal Service web site and confirm the zip codes. That part was actually kinda fun and only eroded about 10 minutes of my workday.
  
• Last but not least, I’m required to bring a picture ID to closing. I have one in my possession, but with my luck I’ll get an 11th-hour request to go get a new one (on company time, no doubt) so that the photo matches my current hairstyle. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
  

So yeah, it’s been a busy couple weeks at Media Headquarters. The refinancing may just get done this week. I’m hoping! And then it’s back to the much easier task of creating an award-winning health and wellness magazine. Relief!

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04/25/03’s illustrious band:

Paranormal Bouquet

Brought to you by the fact that I’m a big geek.

I’ll spend much of this weekend as I spent part of last weekend: watching the first two seasons of The X-Files on DVDs on loan from Sister-san. The show debuted in 1993, the same year I moved to the Twin Cities, and it saw me through some good times and some strange ones. However, we parted ways around the middle of Season 8, when things X got too weird even for me (resurrection of dead FBI agent), and I’ve been on my own since then. I believe the series ended with Season 9.

I like X because I like “out-there” stuff, like science fiction and fantasy, good mysteries and the occasional horror movie. X incorporates all those things, along with interesting characters, snappy dialogue and almost-plausible supernatural storylines. The show was ground-breaking TV when it first aired, broaching subjects with, as lead character Agent Mulder put it, “a distinct paranormal bouquet.” It never shied away from scaring or grossing out its audience, or from confusing the heck out of it, or from demonizing the U.S. government in conspiracy theories so outrageous that some of them might actually be true.

X was born at about the same time the Internet was becoming a household word and tool, so X fandom grew up online. Devotees of the show, called X-Philes, have dissected it to death, expanded it with endless megabytes of fanfic (fiction written by fans), even scripting a few “virtual” seasons to tell their own stories. In some, it’s straight-up detective work and UFO chasing or monster-of-the-week stuff; in some, lead characters Mulder and Scully fall in love with each other, in varying degrees of graphic detail; in some, they become attracted to other people and have sexually explicit adventures with them; in some, the “slash” subgenre, same-sex characters become involved; in some, the self-defense-impaired Mulder just gets beat up a lot. There’s a story for every fan and a fan for every story. Not only is everybody a critic, now everybody is a writer, too.

So there’s plenty to enjoy beyond the confines of the TV screen. The list includes a movie, Fight the Future (1998), a few novels more poorly written than some of the fanfic, fan conventions, DVD-ROM games and all the usual T-shirts, caps and keychains. There’s a sense of us-versus-them: “us” is the Believers, and “them” is the poor, propaganda-blinded Nonbelievers. X-Philedom is a strange sort of club where any crackpot can feel right at home. In short, it’s a lot of fun.

So that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend: sniffing that paranormal bouquet. And working in the yard and reading in the hammock and practicing T’ai Chi and doing the grocery shopping and the laundry and the ironing, of course. Because you can’t ignore the real world, no matter how intriguing the make-believe one is. The truth is out there.

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04/24/03’s illustrious band:

Safekrush

Brought to you by The Other Amy, managing editor of the country’s largest gardening magazine.

We’re talking about Safekrush, the concussion extermination system (www.safecrush.com). At first glance, you might think that a concussion extermination system exists for the extermination of concussion, perhaps in the form of a football helmet or shock absorber. But Safekrush is a system for extermination through concussion -- i.e., blowing stuff up.

Specifically, blowing critters up. Safekrush is a “humane but deadly” method for getting rid of burrowing critters in your yard or garden. (Last I looked, “humane” and “deadly” were sort of opposites, but nobody asked me.) The advertising promises that you will be able to bring pocket gophers, moles, muskrats, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, badgers and woodchucks under control. All you have to do is inject a mixture of oxygen and propane into the animals’ tunnels, press the button, and KABOOM! “Ignition of the mixed gasses in a closed underground space results in a massive concussion traveling at 5,000 feet per second that instantly and humanely kills the Gopher [sic] and collapses the tunnel.”

Is anyone else thinking of Bill Murray’s gopher-hating, bomb-loving Caddyshack groundskeeper here?

The big draw is supposed to be that Safekrush is better than other, messier extermination methods. In fact, the product is targeted specifically at women. The press kit reads, “What women do not like: Setting steel spring traps, spreading poison baits or noxious liquids, lighting toxic smoke bombs or fumigants, removing dead animals from traps . . .” Yeah, no woman likes to do those things. (Men do, the promo infers.) But blowing a few of God’s creatures to kingdom come? You betcha!

I haven’t had this much fun with promotional literature since I got that Rest Room World catalog back in September.

The frequently asked questions on the back of the press kit are my favorite part. For instance:

• “Will the underground concussion damage roots, buried pipes or cables or drip irrigation systems? Our experience has been that no damage is done to underground objects.”
  Translation: Uh, not when we tested the first batch in Jed’s backyard. We don’t think. ‘Course, Jed ain’t got none o’ that stuff in his yard.

  
  

• “What about the potential for starting a fire? This is a definite hazard under some conditions. Great care must be taken around dried grasses or other combustible materials . . .”
  Translation: Hell yes, this is dangerous, girl! You’re SETTING OFF A GAS BOMB!

  
  

• “How can I be sure that I can do this job? If you can squeeze a trigger to release the gasses and push a remote control button to ignite the gasses, you will be a great success at concussion extermination.”
  Translation: Any idiot can do this. We should know.

  
  

Oh, and did I mention the price? A complete Safekrush system, including one injection assembly, one ignition device, two pressure control valves and a mobile cart, will cost you $1,170 plus $25 shipping and handling, for a grand total of $1,195 (California residents add 7.5% sales tax). And the unit is not subject to return.

Notice anything missing? Like the combustible gasses? Well, if you read the fine print, you’ll learn that “Oxygen and propane tanks are not provided since they are heavy to ship and must be charged locally in any case.” I’m thinking I could just buy a couple tanks of gas, some rubber hose, a cheap-looking dolly and various other dangerous things at my local hardware store and start concussively exterminating on my own. Then again, that sounds a lot like the plot of a sketch on The Red Green Show.

So there you have it, folks: the finest critter ridder technology can offer. Give the product this consideration it deserves. Then let your cat or terrier out.

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04/23/03’s illustrious band:

The Green Albatross

Brought to you by a boy and his pickup.

Once upon a time, I was married to a guy I shall refer to as El Pendejo. (Spanish speakers will note that this is not an affectionate nickname.) While we did not have children together, we did have vehicles, and that’s where the story gets ugly. Well, one of the places where it gets ugly.

When EP and I split three years ago, he got custody of the green pickup. Things went OK for a while, with him making payments on his wheels and me on mine. But about this time last year, he started missing payments. Lots of them. Big ones. Since both our names were on the loan, the bank helped itself to the missing funds from the next best account. That happened to be MY account, and I was not notified in advance that this would be happening. So imagine my surprise, and my vocabulary, when I awoke one morning to find a couple grand missing.

Yeah. Once I returned from orbit, I placed a sharply worded phone call to EP. After much hemming and hawing, he admitted that he’d known this day was coming, and he was very sorry, but he didn’t have the money to pay me back. However, he was “working on” the problem. I know him well enough to know that “working on” means “studiously ignoring,” but he at least got his parents to reimburse me for the missed payments.

EP could not come up with a plan to meet his obligations, and another payment got missed, so I made my next call to his parents. Normally I wouldn’t hold parents responsible for the actions of a man in his mid-30s, but they had made the mistake, when we split, of saying, “If there’s ever anything we can do for you, just ask.” So I asked.

In the end, after much more hemming and hawing, the Mother and Father P decided to buy the pickup from their son and make the payments. Father P figured he could use the truck in his part-time landscaping business. They took out a loan, sent me the title to sign, and all was quiet.

Until tax time this spring. I opened up my state tax refund check to find it a couple hundred dollars light, along with a note stating that the corresponding amount had been “reclaimed” by the Department of Revenue. The parties requesting the reclamation were collection agencies.

I knew right away where to trace this new trouble to, since I’ve never had a collection agency after me in my life. Working the phones revealed that several unpaid parking tickets had accrued to a certain green pickup with a certain familiar license plate number, and since my name was on the truck’s title, the claimants tapped my tax refund.

What? My name on the title?! But I had sold that truck six months ago!

Several more calls later, I learned that the title had not actually been transferred. So I sent a very strongly worded letter to Mother P telling her who to call, what to do and how much to reimburse me. Again. A month passed with no results, during which time I cursed the whole clan for irresponsible good-for-nothings, so I resent my “request” via registered mail. And I added a warning that if they didn’t take care of business post haste, I would reclaim my property.

Mother P finally called back to say that she’d sent me a check, a copy of the now-transferred title, and a letter of explanation immediately upon receipt of my first letter, so if it was lost, she’d resend. But then it turned up in a stack of office mail (since I didn’t want to give them my home address) that had been delivered just a couple days ago. And her second envelope reached my desk an hour later. Good ol’ mailroom!

In her letter, Mother P referred to the pickup as a green albatross that has caused nothing but trouble since she became involved with it. (Yeah, one could say the same thing about certain of her offspring.) Her loan officer had screwed up on the sales tax, leaving her with an unpleasant surprise later on, and he had also failed to carry out the title transfer, resulting in my tax reclamation problem. Also, the truck turned out to need several thousand dollars’ worth of repairs before Father P could reliably use it in his business. On top of that, Grandmother P had recently passed away. Plus, EP’s sister, after briefly escaping an abusive marriage, abruptly decided to return to it and cut off all contact with the family. So it hasn’t exactly been happy fun time at the P house.

I’m still peeved at the mishandling of the affair, but I felt sorry enough for Mother P to send her a sympathy note. She at least seems to be trying to behave well, but she sure isn’t getting any help.

Anyway, I hope that this chapter in my life, and Mother P’s, is finally drawing to a close. Let us all think encouraging thoughts, keep up on our car payments, and learn our lesson about marrying pendejos.

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04/22/03’s illustrious band:

The Foot Doilies

Brought to you by my Easter weekend in Sioux Falls.

Over this most recent holiday, I met up with Mother Media, Sister-san, and Brother-in-Law-san in Sioux Falls. Our attempt to dodge the Easter Bunny was unsuccessful, and we were all forced to eat large quantities of candy. All but BIL-san, anyway; he alone had the willpower to resist.

As usual, we camped near the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls and managed to squeeze in a little shopping between trips to restaurants. We saw many entertaining fashions, most of them foot-related for some reason. First came the Foot Tube, which is a tube top for your foot. It’s just a circle of material meant to make slipping into your open-toed sandals a little easier. We were also introduced to the Toe Sock, which covers your toes but not your heel and is suitable for pairing with closed-toe sandals. Foot Tubes are available in a variety of colors (including neon!), while the Toe Socks seemed to be mostly nylons.

How do such things get invented after thousands of years of footwear evolution? You’ve got to wonder if someone was simply pulling on a holey sock one day, noticed which part of the foot stayed covered, and said, “Hmm, maybe I could make this decrepit rag into a fashion, or at least a fad.”

My favorite foot accessory turned out to be the Foot Thong, or Foot Doily, as I call it. Foot Doilies are bits of crocheted, macramae-ed or beaded material that you drape over the instep of your bare foot for decoration, or for when you set an elegant cup of tea on your foot. Secure with an elastic loop over a toe and one behind the heel, and voila! That’s it. Maybe they prevent sunburn or something. But so would a squirt of Coppertone, and I think it would chafe less. Of course, I’m notorious for my lack of fashion sense, so I could just be missing the point here.

We managed to make our own fun even without the doilies. When we weren’t munching, and sometimes even when we were, we played silly word games and pawed the contents of our Easter baskets. In addition to candy, I received items as varied as washable suede gardening gloves, books on tape, a shower curtain liner and a book of crossword puzzles.

I also had the pleasure of borrowing the first two seasons’ worth of The X-Files on DVD from Sister-san, which ought to keep me amused for quite a few evenings. I used to have a good-sized crush on Agent Mulder, the handsome, brooding FBI agent played by David Duchovny. I was really into the show until Mulder was abducted and snuffed by aliens (or maybe it was the government), then came back to life for further contract negotiations. Rising from the dead is OK if you’re, say, the Son of God, but for TV characters it’s just not cool. I quit watching the show after the resurrection. Which still leaves me four or five more seasons to revisit before things start getting . . . spooky.

I had the additional pleasure of presenting Mother Media with several varieties of Marshmallow Peeps. She and her sisters actually eat those indestructible pastel horrors! And they don’t like ‘em fresh, they like ‘em slightly stale and crunchy. They’re probably chowing down right now, in fact. I’m a junk-food junkie to the core, but even I cannot stomach Peeps. Hats off to those who can.

I returned from my sojourn to find tulips cautiously poking their heads up on the borders of the vast, manicured lawns at Sensational Acres. Guess it’s time to take the lawnmower in for its yearly checkup. I’m in the process of refinancing the mortgage, too, and received welcome news about the appraisal I had done last week. Sensational Acres is a hot property! And finally, an ex-husband-related problem seems to be on its way to getting resolved at long last, so I’m pretty happy about that. All in all, an auspicious start to spring!

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04/16/03’s illustrious band:

Colossal Colon

Brought to you by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The latest issue of JAMA spotlights a gigantic model of a human colon that’s touring the country to raise awareness about colorectal cancer. The colon is constructed of plywood and polyurethane, and it’s 40 feet long and large enough in diameter for people to crawl through. “The tunnel features realistic depictions of early and advanced malignancies, polyps, and diverticulosis, all modeled from structures seen on colonoscopy,” says the report.

Images of the super-bowel reveal elaborate paint jobs on both the interior and exterior, with realistic texturing and faux finishes Martha Stewart herself would be proud of. Equally striking are the volleyball-sized polyps and a rashy patch of tissue as tall as a third-grader. Numerous Plexiglas viewing windows admit light and the stares of onlookers to the inner workings.

Yeah, so what can I say about a colossal colon? I’m sure it has already been the butt of innumerable jokes. My first thought was to wonder how they clean the thing. Does someone just scatter bran flakes through there every evening, or sluice the passage with prune juice, and return in the morning to find it gleaming? And how is it transported? On a colon semi, I’m assuming. Are the people who maintain it called colonials or colonics? Or colonnades? Are the institutions that exhibit it referred to as having been colonized?

Wow, I just realized I’ve been distracted by this extra-large intestine for at least 20 minutes. Consider my awareness, if not my intellect, elevated.

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04/14/03’s illustrious band:

Streamers

Brought to you by a gorgeous weekend.

The weather was splendid this past weekend, so I spent a good bit of time puttering about Sensational Acres and the surrounding environs. Highlights included hauling my treasured hammock out of storage, clearing the back bedroom of garagable items that got stored there when the garage door broke, hauling an unwanted credenza to the curb and watching it disappear, and, best of all, taking my first bike ride in nearly two years.

Why so long since I biked? I’m not sure. I just never got around to it last summer. For one thing, the bike’s tires needed air, which meant I would have to find a way to get it to the filling station to get pumped up. I don’t have a bike rack on the car, so I have to stuff the bike into the trunk, which ain’t easy. I live in a flat, rather uninteresting suburb, so there aren’t many places I care to pedal to. And since I don’t currently have a lock for the bike, I wouldn’t feel comfortable riding it for errands and leaving it parked outside stores. I’m also not fond of my early-90s-era helmet, which looks like a small, round Styrofoam beer cooler on my head. So I just kept finding excuses not to ride.

This spring, however, it’s a different story. Through my work last year on a bicycling story for the Award-Winning Magazine, I acquired a map of bike trails in the metro area. I also came into possession of a set of colorful Mylar handlebar streamers. A lot of sober adults might not affix streamers to their cycles, but since I was already planning to ride in Lycra and a beer cooler, I figured what the heck. I aired up, mounted up and hit the road this weekend, colors aflutter.

I found a trail not too far from Sensational Acres. The good news was its proximity; the bad news was that it’s situated at the bottom of a loooong, loooong hill. That’s great when you’re approaching the trail, but the hill climb is a bugger coming back. Still, I tackled it and had a nice meander down by the river. There were plenty of other people out enjoying the trail, too, and I was surprised by the number of strollers who, when seeing a wheeled vehicle approaching from behind, would twitch directly into its path, think about it for a moment, then move back out of the way. I probably do the same thing when I’m on foot. Maybe I’d better invest in a little warning bell, too.

Bikes aren’t allowed on the western half of the trail, so I’ll have to return to explore that part on foot. The eastern half was shorter than I wanted it to be, but considering I’m not in great biking shape yet, that’s probably just as well. After my trek, I managed to make it all the way back up the hill with only a minimum of grunting and groaning.

I think the streamers helped. It’s hard to get too grim about exercise when there’s a cat toy sticking out from each handlebar. I also found them to be reliable wind gauges, confirming my suspicion that I was pedaling into a stiff headwind no matter which direction I faced. The Mylar makes a nice noise in the breeze, too, providing a little advance warning for people up ahead.

I’m glad I took the time to get some cycling in yesterday, because while today is beautiful, it’s supposed to be snowing again by Wednesday. Maybe I’ll bring the streamers in and tape them to the NordicTrack until the weather clears again.

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04/10/03’s illustrious band:

Butt Sad

A cautionary tale about when slang goes bad, brought to you by the Chicken Step Lady.

Once upon a time, there was a teenage girl of Chicken Step Lady’s acquaintance whose adverb of choice was “butt.” She used “butt” they way one might use “very,” to intensify other descriptions. For example, if something were very ugly, she’d call it butt ugly; for very funny, she said butt funny. (No argument there.)

One day the girl saw the movie Schindler’s List, a deeply moving tale of survival during the Holocaust, with a group from her school. As the young people emerged from the theater, all of them upset, many weeping, she wailed into her Kleenex, “That was butt sad!”

And despite themselves, everyone began to laugh.

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04/09/03’s illustrious band:

Rumors of Cheesecake

Brought to you by Woody, Master of Cheesecake.

Woody is the guy at the T’ai Chi studio who makes cakes, or cheesecakes, for special occasions like birthdays and holidays. On Monday, he had brought samples of a new cheesecake recipe he wanted us to try. Since there wasn’t much of it, though, he waited until the largest class of the evening had cleared out before he brought in the goodies. So all during the first part of the evening whispered rumors of cheesecake.

Woody set up his wares in the little room where Lightbringer and I were practicing some hard-style self-defense. Do you know how hard it is to stay focused when you have to step carefully around a table laden with desserts? When you have to deal with troublesome punches and devastating aromas zipping past your nose?

The worst of it was, both Lightbringer and I, while not usually averse to free sweets, were at that stage of physical exertion where it does not feel good to eat. So we sparred and sweated, but did not indulge. It was a good workout, though.

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04/09/03’s illustrious band:

Rumors of Cheesecake

Brought to you by Woody, Master of Cheesecake.

Woody is the guy at the T’ai Chi studio who makes cakes, or cheesecakes, for special occasions like birthdays and holidays. On Monday, he had brought samples of a new cheesecake recipe he wanted us to try. Since there wasn’t much of it, though, he waited until the largest class of the evening had cleared out before he brought out the goodies. So all during the first part of the evening whispered rumors of cheesecake.

Woody set up his wares in the little room where Lightbringer and I were practicing some hard-style self-defense. Do you know how hard it is to stay focused when you have to step carefully around a table laden with desserts? When you have to deal with troublesome punches and devastating aromas zipping past your nose?

The worst of it was, both Lightbringer and I, while not usually averse to free sweets, were at that stage of physical exertion where it does not feel good to eat. So we sparred and sweated, but did not indulge. It was a good workout, though.

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

04/08/03’s illustrious band:

Pompom Cooties

Happy Birthday, Sister-san!

Brought to you by my work for an Award-Winning Magazine.

I was recently recruited to model for photos for one of our magazine articles, chosen primarily for my ability to jump into the air and kick my heels to the side just so. In complimenting my jumping ability, El Queso Grande made the mistake of commenting that I must have been a cheerleader in high school.

My reaction could be described as fairly negative; the cheerleaders in my class were best known for drinking lots of beer at parties and dating lots of boys. I, of course, did not drink beer at parties, and I dated only boys carefully selected for their potential to annoy my parents.

Fast forward to this morning, where there’s a spring cleaning effort afoot at Media Headquarters. Someone had found a set of mini-pompoms in a storage cubicle -- don’t ask me what they were doing in our highly professional, strictly business office -- and set them out on the “free” counter. Of course I picked them up. (For one thing, they’re in the school colors of Dad’s alma mater, SDSU, better known as Moo U to us USD graduates.) And I revenged myself upon El Queso Grande by performing a cheer, complete with jumps and kicks, in her office, while she was trying to take a drink. Wanna hear it? Ready? OK!

Health and wellness is the best!

Go and get your colon test!

Pretty good for an impromptu cheer, if I do say so myself, and the choreography was the best you could expect in the tight confines of an office, from someone wearing business attire.

Of course, this was not to be the end of it. Oh no. I also composed a cheer praising bicycling as a form of exercise, and I was then required to repeat both for our publisher when he stopped by. It was also threatened that I might be asked to cheer at our next staff meeting, which will be held in a glass-walled conference room abutting the lobby.

So this might not have been such sweet revenge after all. The only thing good about it is that I can chase male colleagues with the pompoms and threaten their masculinity with pompom cooties. I haven’t had too many disturbances in my office today.

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

P.S. I’d be happy to compose and perform a personalized cheer for your next birthday, family reunion, church fund-raiser or corporate event. Sliding fee scale. And no, I will not wear the little pleated skirt. Gotta have standards.

04/07/03’s illustrious band:

BC’s Earplugs

Brought to you by BC. I heard this story over Christmas out west, so please forgive my tardiness in passing it along.

Once upon a time, BC and her husband the Legal Eagle decided to treat themselves to a rock concert. Having learned a lesson from their misspent youth, they also treated themselves to a pair of earplugs apiece to make the experience less dangerous to their hearing. They enjoyed the concert, extracted the earplugs and came home feeling pretty pleased with the whole experience.

As a few days went by, however, BC noticed that the hearing in one ear seemed a little dim. She used a Q-Tip to check for wax and other debris, but found nothing. Being a speech pathologist, BC is well aware of the importance of good hearing to good communication, so she made an appointment to get her ears checked right away.

The nurse at the clinic took a look inside BC’s ear and stifled a giggle. Soon she had extracted the rest of an earplug that had torn off from the original wad and gotten tamped even farther into the ear canal by BC’s probing.

BC reported feeling more than a bit sheepish, as she often lectures the schoolchildren she teaches about not sticking things into their ears. To make matters worse, the young nurse was a former student of BC’s (and a classmate of my own Sister-san, as it happens), so she knew BC should have known better.

Still I’m a big advocate of earplugs myself. I work in an open-plan cube farm at Media Headquarters, and things can get a little loud in there despite the white noise machine. Keyboards clatter, phones ring, conversations gain volume, and the next thing you know, the woman across the hall is shouting the F word at recalcitrant pressmen on a conference call. So I get out my industrial earplugs and retreat to my own personal cone of silence for tasks that require particular concentration.

Since my Award-Winning Magazine recently published a story on the dangers of too much background noise, I feel well justified in plugging up. But you won’t catch me stuffing them too far into my head.

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

04/03/03’s illustrious band:

The Wrong Trousers

Brought to you by several pants-related conversations I've had lately.

Item 1: Has everyone seen the Wallace & Gromit videos? They're exceptionally high-quality claymation movies (from Nick Park & Co., the makers of Chicken Run), about 30-40 minutes apiece, about befuddled British inventor Wallace and his clever, exasperated, dog Gromit. There are only 3 or 4 W&G movies that I know of. My favorite is The Wrong Trousers. In this episode, Wallace invents a pair of mechanical pants that he can program to take Gromit out for a walk and a couple other tasks. But Wallace accidentally puts them on himself one morning, and things go, as they say, comically awry.

Trousers aside, the best part of the movie is an evil penguin who, because the police are after him, masquerades as a rooster by putting a red rubber glove on the top of his head. How a beady-eyed, nearly featureless penguin can appear so expressively sinister is beyond me -- but not beyond animator Nick Park.

Item 2: Media Headquarters has, and sometimes enforces, a dress code. One of the rules is that jeans are not to be worn in the office except on Fridays. People will occasionally wear "heavy cotton trousers," a.k.a. jeans of color, however. For the most part that's not a problem, although we do tease one another about getting busted. Yesterday, El Queso Grande and I both wore black denim but promised not to turn each other in. I've also heard tell of an incident involving Amy 2.0 and a skort that lacked a matching jacket, and was therefore found to be in violation of the dress code. I'm not sure of the logic on that one.

I used to find it surprising that adults had to be told what to wear and not wear to the office, but Northwoods Barbie changed that. NB (who no longer works for Media HQ) was a statuesque blonde who favored extremely slinky clothes, to the point that she once showed up in a "dress" that looked a lot more like a silk slip than a dress -- a "Hey, sailor, lookin' for a date?" dress, not a business casual dress, at that. Legend has it that she did receive a wardrobe reprimand, but not for the slip/dress; I think she wore jeans on the wrong day or something.

Item 3: I'm wearing a dress today -- ankle length, with long sleeves, thank you very much. And sandals, too. And it's 33 degrees out, with spitting rain that will turn to sleet in just a few minutes. I'm not sure what possessed me to dress this way this morning; I had already been outside for a run and knew what the weather was like. Maybe I've been inhaling too much printer toner lately or something.

Well, rest assured that I will not wear the wrong trousers tomorrow. I have a pair of Friday jeans all washed and ready to go.

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

04/02/03’s illustrious band:

Canned Meat Can-Can

Brought to you by Hormel, makers of Spam. This month's reading from the Book of Spam:

Hormel honcho Jay Hormel came up with some very creative ideas to promote Spam. Like the Hormel Girls. This special sales team was originally composed entirely of ex-servicewomen (which provided work for some of those who had left the armed forces after WWII). All Hormel Girls were required to possess character, musical ability, and a talent for sales. At first, they visited grocers, entertained at civic meetings, and marched in parades.

The next project for the Hormel Girls was to be a nationwide radio show. The requirement that all members be former service personnel was dropped in order to find the large amount of musical talent needed: an orchestra of 24, a chorus of 36, and a band of 60. "Music With the Hormel Girls" was on the air for 5 years. When the Girls weren't on the air, they toured the country in a caravan of 35 white cars, selling Spam.

Have I mentioned lately how much I appreciate my cozy, Spamless little desk job?

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

04/01/03’s illustrious band:

I'm Serious

No band name today -- too busy.

Ha ha, April Fool! I have a band for you.

No, actually, I don't. It's 9:30 p.m., for heaven's sake. I have to get to bed.

OK, I was kidding. I'm posting today's band name right now.

No I'm not. Don't believe everything you read.

Well, OK, maybe just a short one.

Well, no, I need to empty the dishwasher before bedtime. Can't spend all evening at the computer.

Yes I can. It won't take that long. Here you go.

Did you get it? Did you get the band name?

Ha, gotcha! There really isn't one.

Don't tell me you fell for that old April Fool's bit? Of course there's a Band Name of the Day. There's always a Band Name of the Day.

Except on days there isn't.

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