Inland Luau

Brought to you by the country club.

Once upon a time, the Media family belonged to our local country club. The Media parents and I all belonged to golf leagues; Sister-san was too young. I was never much pleased with an activity that required me to miss cartoons on summer Saturday mornings, especially since I wasn't much good at it. I was no good at being bad at things in those days. I especially dreaded out-of-town tournaments where a girl named Tricia would also be competing. Tricia's dad was a golf pro, so she was a much better golfer than I was. She was also a couple years younger than I was, and I absolutely hated losing to a younger girl.

My parents assured me I'd thank them later for teaching me to golf, as it was a social skill that would be invaluable later in life: a way to bond with my future husband's friends' wives or perhaps even with business colleagues. This is one of the few instances in which they've been proven wrong (so far). I haven't played a round of full-size golf in about 25 years. I'm sure I'd be much better at it now that I've been studying T'ai Chi for a while. If the improved coordination hasn't improved my swing, at least T'ai Chi has done wonders for my attitude. But I'm in no hurry to test that theory.

So I wasn't much of a golfer, but the country club offered other pleasures. There was the swimming pool, of course. It wasn't that much of a draw to me because we lived a block from the city pool, which was bigger, but dipping my toes in new waters was always a welcome novelty. I also liked the driving range, where I could whack ball after ball as badly as I pleased so long as I didn't disturb anyone else.

Also, there were golf carts. Golf carts! A golf cart is like a sports car to a 10-year-old, even one like me who swore she had no ambition to drive a car. (Mother Media is laughing her buns off right now; I've practically lived behind the wheel from the moment I got my license.) My parents let me drive the cart, and it was a blast. I was obviously very, very mature. I'll bet little Tricia didn't get to drive a cart. I'll bet her little feet didn't even reach the pedals, so nyah.

The best part, though, was when Dad decided the cart needed a wash. There was a gas station with self-service wash bays across the road from the cart sheds, so Dad would just drive on over there. He took the golf cart on the highway! Dude! And he let me ride along! That was super exciting stuff, to be riding in an open-sided vehicle on the highway (for about two blocks, max). We must have been going 15, 20 miles an hour. What a rush.

I also recall believing for at least a short time that our family didn't have to pay for meals in the dining room, presumably because my parents were so well liked. After all, I never saw money change hands after the steaks and baked potatoes had been consumed. This was before I understood the concept of running a tab.

Anyway. Every summer, the country club threw a luau. The idea of a luau on the Great Plains is fairly ironic — you can't get much farther from the beach than the geographic center of the nation — but we didn't care. A party's a party, and we looked forward to this one all summer. There were probably grass skirts and coconut bras and tiki lanterns, and swimming under the watchful eyes of some club member's teenager; I don't remember exactly. What I do remember was that the luau was just plain fun.

There were golf competitions like the ball-and-chain tournament, in which married couples competed as teams, and booby prizes whose jokes sailed right over my sun-bleached little head. There was a huge cookout with all the trimmings, including the world's greatest hors d'ouevres: pineapple and banana chunks skewered on toothpicks and rolled in crushed salted peanuts. Oy, so tasty! I've never tried recreating this delicacy on my own, probably because it wouldn't taste as good as the memories do. But it might be worth a try.

There was always a water balloon toss sometime in the evening. I have a better appreciation now for the role alcohol must have played in making it so exciting. One year my Girl Scout troop set up collection bins for aluminum cans and made what passed for a small fortune at the recycling center. We kids spent our share of time at the bar, too, ordering cherry Cokes — real cherry Cokes made with fountain Coke and cherry syrup and garnished with a maraschino or two — and thinking we were the bees' knees. We ran around essentially unsupervised, which was okay as long as we didn't tear up the putting green.

Eventually my parents stopped renewing their club membership, maybe when Dad's back problems made swinging a golf club more pain than pleasure. I didn't miss those Saturday morning rounds of dodge the sprinkler/squint into the sun, but I did miss the annual luau.

I still made it out to the country club every once in a while, though. When I was in high school, I attended at least one after-prom party there. The after-prom party was a casino night put on by parents and local businesses, designed to keep us off the streets and away from beer after the Incredibly Huge Deal that was the prom. The clear message: drinking bad; gambling OK. No, I shouldn't make fun. The party was a good thing, with some pretty decent prizes, and it did indeed keep a lot of us from wandering around in cars when we felt duty-bound to stay up all night.

My date to my senior IHD, a nonboyfriend friend named Monte, won a small white hair dryer at the after-prom party, which he gallantly gave to me. I used it for about 15 years, finally junking it when the heating element started to smell funny. Of the three prom dates I had, Monte was my favorite; he was easily the best dancer of the three, and since we weren't dating at the time, there was no pressure to make out.

Anyway. The last time I was in that country club was for the groom's dinner preceding my wedding nine years ago. Our friends and families didn't mingle much, and the clubhouse carpet was shabbier than I remembered. There was no cart driving, no water balloon toss, no hair dryer. The cherry Coke came out of a can, and I had to keep my shoes on and act grown up. I would have preferred a luau.

Today around the world: June 30 is National Day of Prayer in the Central African Republic.

Alasogram

It's nearly July 4 again, which means, to all right-thinking people, that's it's time for CONvergence. CONvergence is an annual sci-fi/fantasy con(vention) held just down the road from Sensational Acres. Geek goddess/compulsive blogger that I am, I attend periodically and write about it afterward. I'm going this weekend; stay tuned.

Since I came to love sci-fi and fantasy through the written word, I always make time at cons to sit in on a few writers' panels. Here's what I learned at one three years ago.

Alasogram was originally posted: 07/17/02

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Brought to you by CONvergence writing panelist and aspiring author Melinda Kimberly.

An alasogram is a "This is a good story but we just can't use it right now" rejection letter sent by an editor to a writer. It's the publishing world's version of "It's not you, it's me:" gently worded, but still a turn-down. "Alas, your story is too long for our format." "Alas, you write hard sci-fi and we only publish fantasy." "Alas, our editorial calendar is filled for the next nine decades. It's a tragedy that we cannot accept your work." Alas, alas.

One of the rules of the writing game is that the writer should keep submitting his or her work for publication, no matter how many alasograms come back. There's always that story of so-and-so who got 75 rejections on that first novel before making the Big Sale, so hang in there, tiger. Editors and publishers, for their part, are supposed to encourage aspiring writers to keep sending stuff in, since they're always eager to discover Fresh New Talent.

Does this sound to anyone else like deciding to flirt only with people you know are already married? Entering the writing game means volunteering to get rejected repeatedly for reasons that have nothing to do with your own merit. Sure, there's that one-in-a-million chance that Mr. Right will recognize your inner beauty and leave his wife for you. But most of the time, you're not on his radar. So why put yourself through it?

Writers ask themselves and one another this question all the time, and so far I haven't heard a good answer. Most say they're demonstrating faith in themselves by sending out the same piece over and over again, because they just know it will get picked up eventually. In the meantime, they're comfortably sure of how the game will play out. A few admit they're seeking approval from the most distant sources possible, and the more the editor plays hard to get, the more the writer wants to court her. It's a huge validation to finally receive that acceptance.

But these are just answers. I don't think they're especially good answers. I have one foot on each side of the fence myself and I still don't know. As an editor, I respond to letters that come in from readers. ("Alas, while your story of successful weight loss is a good one, we've just run six in a row and don't need another right now.") As a writer, I present each article like a cat showing off her latest kill, knowing that my words will be edited and my photo plans rearranged. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Are writer-types simply a twisted breed, or am I on the cusp of uncovering a fundamental lynchpin of human nature here?

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Today around the world: June 29 is St. Peter & St. Paul Day. Rob one, pay the other.

talkin' trash

Obnoxious link du jour:

http://www.trailertrashdoll.com/

Watch Me

Brought to you by Father Time.

I received my first wristwatch when I was four years old and wore a watch for the next 17 years. After a brief flirtation with a vinyl-strapped digital in the late 70s or early 80s, I defaulted to the standard analog format. I don't know about you, but I can't really grok "quarter to six" unless I can actually see the hands marking off one-fourth of the circle. I think I had settled on a classic Mickey Mouse watch at the time I quit using one.

I was always one of those annoyingly punctual people. I'm not just on time, I'm usually a couple minutes early, even for events for which one really ought to arrive fashionably late. Drives people crazy. Drives me crazy; I'd love to not be the first guest at a party sometime, but I just can't seem to make myself do it. If you tell me 6:00, I'll be there at 5:55, circling the block until the appointed hour. If you're hoping people will arrive closer to 6:30, do yourself a favor and just tell me 6:30. Otherwise, I'm going to be hovering around watching you sweep cat hair under the rug at the last minute.

In urging others to be on time, too, I've been accused of having control issues more than once. Many of the artistic types I pal around with prefer to march to the beat and tempo of their own drums, and my chronological conformity makes them suspect me of being Establishment. Honestly, I'm not! I just grew up believing that lateness = rudeness (except in extenuating circumstances, of course). I'll cut you some slack if the baby spit up on your good shirt or you got stuck in traffic, but not if you finally decided to start shaving a mere 10 minutes before curtain time.

The only situation for which I'm willing to make any kind of an exception is T'ai Chi classes, which routinely start a bit late, because hey, it's T'ai Chi. Why be in a rush to start the slowing down process? This made me antsy my first year or so with the studio, but eventually I was able to internalize the in-the-moment concept of T'ai Chi time.

So anyway, there I was in the summer of '92, whiling away the months between my first and second years of grad school with bike rides, blackfly bites, a couple summer classes, and not much else. A friend, noting that I didn't have a whole lot of places to be, encouraged me to take off my watch and live a little. Okay, he didn't encourage me. First he ridiculed me for my slavery to the clock, and when that didn't work, he dared me. So of course I had to try it.

I didn't break up with Mickey all at once. We'd been together so long, I couldn't just dump him cold turkey. I carried the watch in my pocket for a few months as a temporal security blanket. But as time wore on, I found myself forgetting to take it with me, and not missing it. My wrist has been bare for the last 13 years.

Yet I am still annoyingly punctual. People don't understand how I manage it, but there's no great secret. I just don't need a watch because there are clocks everywhere. To wit:

1. clock radio in the bedroom
   
2. microwave timer/clock in the kitchen
   
3. VCR clock in the living room
   
4. shelf clock on a shelf in the office
   
5. digital clock on the computer in the office
   
6. another clock radio in the guest bedroom
   
7. little travel alarm clock in the Rubber Duckie Shrine to Hygiene (remind me to change the batteries)
   
8. clock in the Subarushi
   
9. clocks at the train station
   
10. analog clocks on a building along my walking route to work
    
11. digital time/temp display along my walk to work
    
12. clock on the wall above my desk
    
13. clock in the corner of my computer screen
    
14. clock (currently malfunctioning) on the display screen on my phone
    
15. clocks in every conference room
    
16. watches on just about everybody else's wrist
    
17. and, as a last resort, a clock on the small computer in my purse

Heck, there is no way not to know what time it is! So I will always be prompt. Always. Watch me.

Today around the world: June 28 is three days past Mother Media's birthday. Happy late birthday, Mom!!

Editor's note: Okay, so I was late with the online birthday wish. However, I'll have you know I was johnny on the spot with cards and gifts on the actual day. Besides, that's calendar time, not clock time, which is completely different.

moonequin

Walking past a clothing store, I saw a mannequin wearing a shirt but no pants. Is that a moonequin?

Swing Set

Brought to you by the past week.

I spent last week hanging out at Mother Media's house and bumming around my old stomping grounds. It was my first trip back to my childhood home in nearly two years, and as usual I found that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

My hometown is a small one, saved from complete rurality only by the recent addition of a Hardee's and a Dairy Queen. It's the kind of place where you're not surprised to see a convoy of unsupervised kids on bikes, or a cowboy on horseback clopping along a side street. No one uses turn signals because everyone knows everyone else's car and where it's going anyway; a new vehicle purchase can botch the system for weeks. But so many trees are missing from the street I grew up on that I almost passed Mom's house without recognizing the yard.

New houses have sprung up along new streets and new bridges cross the old river, but the old bridge my school bus used to sway across each morning is no more. Half the homes in town are "where so-and-so used to live" to me now, and most of the storefronts, including Dad's old drugstore, are "where the such-and-such store used to be." (The post office and the bar, of course, remain.) Efforts are underway to boutiquify Main Street the way they've done in the next town over, the pretty one, but so far Hometown remains the gangly, tagalong kid sister.

Oh, and the Penguin Drive-In I wrote about a few weeks ago? Gone. Razed to the ground. No one is sure yet what's going in on that corner next to the car wash, across from the takeout pizza place that used to be a beauty shop, kitty-corner from the grocery store that used to be a different grocery store (and which I still call by the wrong name, but everybody knows which one I mean). That's the grocery store where I learned to shop by watching Mother Media, and even though I live alone now, I still load my cart as if I'm shopping for a family of four.

One thing that hasn't changed much is the big swing set in the park. That park, a block from our house, was my second home for many many years. We had the city swimming pool at the east end (where I learned that blonde hair exposed to too much chlorine and rinsed too seldom will turn green), softball/soccer/kite flying field and skating rink (a banked depression flooded by the fire department each winter) in the middle, tennis courts and playground equipment on the west end. We used to hold the homecoming bonfire in the skating rink each fall, and the older kids would sneak into the warming house (a garishly painted, dilapidated shack with no door) to make out and sneak cigarettes.

The park is almost exactly half a mile around, a fact I know because the high school is just across the street from the former pool/present community center, and the track coaches sent my teammates and me running endless laps around it where they could keep an eye on us. Any time I smell the slush of a spring thaw, I think of slogging around that park wet to the knees, chest aching from the crisp air.

One high school track coach's wife was our "health" teacher ("health" in this case meaning not "sex ed lite," but "copy word for word from this first aid manual for the next two years"). She made us walk all the way down to the tennis courts a few times to try to instill some understanding of that noble game, but the effort failed because none of us was willing to (A) partake of such a snobby pastime or (B) sweat. We tried playing kickball on the softball field a few times, too, which worked a little better. However, that plan fizzled after the day Mrs. Coach got into such an intense battle of wills with one girl in the class that the rest of us simply wandered off. We went back to school; the town was boring enough that we truly had no interest in cutting class, and somebody's mom would have seen and reported us anyway.

Anyway.

Of the three main playground landmarks — slide, big swings, little kid equipment — only one remains intact. The old tall slide, the surface of which reached temperatures approaching that of Mercury in the summer, has been supplanted by a shorter and allegedly safer slide. The stairs to the top are not ordinary slide stairs, but a bulky set of stairs-on-wheels that was retired from greeting small planes at the airport. Somebody painted a few balloons on the side of the stair unit about 20 years ago, and they haven't been touched up since. It's an eyesore, but it was cheap, and when it comes to city projects, that's usually all that counts.

The kiddie play set I remember has also been replaced. The big, rickety, splinter-rich wooden merry-go-round (it was red and blue, I think), with its dirt moat worn by running feet, has given way to a smaller metal version. You can tell it's less popular than the old one because it has less of a moat. There's still a short slide and baby swings, but they face the wrong direction. The animals-on-springs toys are new, or were a dozen years ago. Loose gravel now covers the matted grass beneath these toys — which, FYI, can really mess up your footing if you bail out of a swing at shoulder height, and if it makes you wipe out right in front of your mother, you're in for a scolding.

But the tall swing set between the slide and the little kid stuff is still there. It's got to be 15 or 20 feet tall, a skyscraper. I remember the giddy feeling of accomplishment when I managed to shinny all the way up a support with spit-moistened feet (even though Mother Media forbade me to go barefoot in the park, because You Never Know), then slide down it like a real fireman's pole. I remember throwing swings over the bar to shorten the chains they hung from so we could be completely suspended, our feet not touching the ground even at the low point of the arc. And everyone knew a story about some kid who went so high that he went over the top himself.

We'd take turns twirling one another around to twist the chains tight, then get out of the way while the swinging friend spun herself sick. I had a phobia of getting my long hair caught up in the twisted links, a fear that didn't fade even after a drastic haircut. We'd try swinging face down, the thick rubber seats compressing our chests, but someone would usually end up eating a dirt sandwich before long. We'd say that two people were married if they synchronized their swinging rhythm.

Swinging on the tall swings feels the same as it did when I was eight. Better, even. Not because I've studied enough physics to nod sagely about pendula, fulcra, arcs, velocity, mass, acceleration, friction, gravity, drag, kinetic energy, entropy, and programming VCRs. No. Swinging is better now because my legs are longer and my feet that much closer to the sky.

Today around the world: June 27 is the Anniversary of the Amir's Succession in Qatar.

Who's on First?

Brought to you by our good friend the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It's a good amendment, maybe my favorite one.

So here's a modern wrinkle: What's OK to post in a blog? in an online diary? What's the difference? What can/should you write/publish about yourself? about other people? about public figures? Is a blog or an open diary a public place? Are the rules different for public speech? Does it matter what your intentions are if people take amiss something you post? Have you heard the term dooced?

Let me hear from all you readers and writers on this. No, I haven't been getting hate mail for my screeds about voice menus, bad customer service, and lousy summer jobs. But this topic has been a subject of much discussion lately amongst my blogfriends, and I'm interested in hearing all the opinions I can.

BND not MIA

This Media Sensation will be off duty next week — but I'll still be checking comments and e-mail, so don't let that stop you from dropping me a line or six. The naming of bands will resume 6/27. We apologize for any withdrawal symptoms this hiatus may cause.

Today around the world: June 17 is World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. Which world? This one.

Random Acts

Brought to you by random synaptic firings.

Act I: What's with the flaps? I recently bought a nice pullover blouse from a nice store, and it has a flap. Women know what I’m talking about — a strip of material running around the inside of the neckline. What purpose does this serve? Flaps look a lot like the wings on certain personal products, yet they function in just the opposite manner: wings help things stay put, while flaps, as far as I can tell, exist only to get rucked up and stick out through the neck hole every time I move my head, making it look as if I can't dress myself.

I've noticed that my nicer pullover shirts are the ones that have the evil flaps, while more casual shirts don't, so they're not entirely random. Could somebody please clue me in? 'Cuz I'm about to take a pair of scissors to a very nice garment.

Act II: I hope more people have been acting on yesterday's Good Deed Dare than have told me about it so far, or that you're just being modest. Keep up the good work.

Act III: My favorite gum is Doublemint, even though it doesn't blow very good bubbles. I've been chewing it since high school (not the same piece). The flavor really does last. Also, it does not contain NutraSweet, with which I do not get along very well.

Act IV (for blogtechgeeks only): BND is syndicated (Atom feed). You can subscribe via Bloglines and other news aggregators. Site feed URL: http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

Act V: What do guys want for Father's Day? Seriously, I could use some tips here.

Today around the world: June 15 is Valdemars Day in Denmark in honor of the several kings who have borne that name. Harry Potter fans note: that's Valdemar, not — uh, you know.

Good Deed Dare

No time for a wordy story today, so instead I'll issue the Good Deed Dare.

Rules

1. Commit a random act of kindness. No incidence of thoughtfulness too small!

   
   

2. Report your good deed back to me in an ANNONYMOUS comment. Mailing list members can visit the BND home page at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com, click the "comment" button at the bottom of this or any post, and follow the directions. Or drop me a postcard with your warm fuzzy written/illustrated on it.

   
   

3. Repeat as desired.

That's it. The key here is the anonymity. No credit, no ego strokes. Just create something good in the world. Maybe I'll compile a list.

Saints Day

Brought to you by my employer, who took us out to the ball game for a company outing this past weekend.

I have now seen Saints come marching in — the St. Paul Saints, our local not-quite-prime time baseball team. Saints games are always entertaining, not because of the baseball, but because of the goofy stunts and promotions sprinkled liberally between innings and changeovers. I'm not sure whether this is due to the influence of one of the team's owners, actor/SNL alumnus/all around banjo sexy dude Bill Murray, or just a way of boosting interest in an otherwise low-hype team. Or maybe it has something to do with each stunt being sponsored by a vendor of some kind.

We witnessed, in no particular order:

• Human bowling for yogurt: People inside human-sized gerbil exercise balls ran down the baselines to knock over bottom-weighted inflatable yogurt shake bottles. When one runner got too far ahead, the yogurt staff moved the bottles farther and farther away. Sponsor: yogurt vendor.

  
  

• Chicken dance competition: A woman and a boy from the audience competed to see whose chicken dance earned greater audience approval. (The kid won, of course.) Sponsor: chicken company.

  
  

• Coupons for pizza if a certain opposing player struck out (he never did). Sponsor: pizza place.

  
  

• Catch the meatball: gift certificates to an Italian restaurant for the audience member who caught the big meatball (a beach ball with appropriate surface details). Sponsor: restaurant.

  
  

• Chase the child: a guy in a mad scientist outfit chasing some lucky kid around the bases. The kid had a one-base head start and won by a nose. Not sure what the prize was. Sponsor: I didn't catch this one.

  
  

• Tire rolling contest: two teams of two lucky kids each rolling colored tires for prizes. Again, not sure what prizes. Sponsor: tire retailer.

  
  

• A taco-eating contest. Three lucky audience dudes vied for a year's supply of Taco Bell. (If I'd won, about half a dozen tacos would constitute a year's supply.) The winner downed about a dozen in less than a minute. Sponsor: Taco Bell.

  
  

• Recognition of student achievement: a middle school student was recognized, albeit unintelligibly, for great attendance, citizenship, and attitude. Sponsor: possibly the kid's school, possibly the baseball team itself, possibly some other entity.

  
  

• Karaoke "with a real live Japanese guy:" as advertised. An Asian gentleman belted out "Witch Doctor" while the crowd attempted to sing along. That didn't seem quite PC to me. Sponsor: not sure.

  
  

• Scrubs: The home team played in pink hospital scrub shirts instead of blue baseball jerseys. Sponsor: scrub retailer.

  
  

• What's in the Bag? A Let's Make a Deal-style "guess which is better" game. An audience member won a DVD set of a popular TV show (Scrubs, of course) rather than a less valuable gift certificate to a grocery store. Sponsor: grocery store.

  
  

• A beer stein race: Two guys raced to see who could fill a pitcher with beer, one stein's worth at a time. Sponsor: beer vendor(s).

  
  

• Drag: Three guys came out to drag the baseline paths dressed in very, very bad drag. Very bad. Sponsor: I'd like to say it was the local drag clothing emporium, but I think this one was just for kicks.

  
  

• A nun giving shoulder massages. Sponsor: God.

  
  

• A live pig: Saint, the team's mascot. Why is Saint a pig? I don't know. Sponsor: American Pork Council?

  
  

• A face painter strolling the stands in cape and painted-on mask requiring people to bow in her presence. Sponsor: Saints organization.

  
  

• Numerous birthday announcements. Sponsors: several companies' names displayed on scoreboard during announcements.

  
  

• And more, I'm sure.

Oh, and let's not forget the announcer hollering, "Train!" whenever a choo-choo passed the outfield fence — at least half a dozen times during the game I saw, probably more.

Our event kicked off with a tailgate party on the lawn. A pair of Saints players showed up to autograph the free caps we all received, but since neither of them actually played in the game, we joked that they probably weren't real Saints at all — maybe overgrown bat boys or out-of-work hockey players. I looked them up later, though, and found I'd met two of the team's 12 pitchers, Bryan Gaal (#27) and Darren Truty (#41). I'm no baseball expert, but does that seem like a lot of pitchers to anyone else?

Anyway, the outing was a big hit. The Saints trounced the Gary (IN) Railcats 6-3. (What the heck is a railcat?) I'd be happier today if I had managed to grab the sunscreen instead of the bug spray on my way to the ballpark, but I'm sure the glow will fade in a few days.

Today around the world: June 13 is Shavu'ot (Pentecost) in Judaism.

Wanna hear my favorite joke? OK, here goes:

What do you call a boomerang that won't come back?





(Scroll down)











(Scroll some more)












(almost there)















A STICK!!!



:-)

A Friend for Billy

Brought to you by junior high.

Once upon a time, there was this boy named Billy. Billy had some sort of physical impairment and possibly learning disabilities as well; I don't recall for sure. Despite his special needs, Billy had been mainstreamed into our fifth-grade class. Now I wonder how, with his bowed spine and leg braces, he was able to negotiate the endless stairs in that building, because as far as I know it didn’t have an elevator. I suppose it just took him longer than the rest of us, and we just streamed around him without paying much attention.

It's not that we didn't notice. It was impossible not to notice this kid who was so different from the rest of us, especially since we hadn't known him since preschool as we had everyone else. He wasn't gross-different like Marvin, who made a show of eating his boogers, and he wasn't obnoxious-different like Curtis, who always had his name on the board for talking in class. Billy was just physically different, which was actually a refreshing change from the annoying-different boys. So nobody minded Billy, and I don't remember anyone picking on him.

But no one included him much, either. Unable to run around, he didn't join in the games of basketball, tag, or pigtail pulling at recess. His balance wasn't good enough for tetherball nor his coordination for playing catch, either, so mostly he just stood by the wall.

This brought him to the attention of the cool girls, who also stood around a lot because they were too cool to run around pretending to be horses like some of the rest of us. Becky, the chief cool girl, took particular notice. (Becky liked to pretend-brag that the Kenny Rogers song "Coward of the County," very popular around that time, was about her because it mentioned a girl named Becky, and we all agreed that was pretty neat. None of us understood what it meant that in the song, Becky was a rape victim.) Becky decided she would do a good deed and find a friend for Billy.

She must have asked every boy in the fifth grade if he'd be Billy's friend. (She did not ask the sixth graders, of course; we fifth graders were the youngest class in the school, and sixth graders were too far above us on the social ladder.) Naturally she started with the cool boys since they were already her friends, and while they all agreed it was a good idea to be nice to Billy, none was willing to give up game time to stand around with him like a girl. So Becky moved on down the food chain, getting the same response every time, until she'd struck out with even Marvin and Curtis.

I was secretly glad that her plan failed, not because I didn't want Billy to have a friend, but because I was jealous that I hadn't thought of the project myself. If I had been a truly good person, I reasoned, the idea it would have occurred to me immediately. But it occurred to Becky instead, whom I disliked because she was usually snotty to horse-girls like my friends and me and clearly thought she was better than us. We'd spent considerable time reassuring ourselves that Becky was not, in fact, better than us, but now I wasn't so sure, because she was trying to do something nice for the poor crippled kid and I wasn't.

Before I could develop a complex about it, however, the question became moot. One week Billy was no longer in our class. We didn't know where he disappeared to, but we figured his family must have moved, because no one saw him lurching around town with his distinctive, disjointed gait any more. We didn’t miss him, because he'd never really felt like part of the class, but we didn't entirely forget him, either.

It didn't occur to me until years later that finding a friend for Billy was not what I should have done. I should have been a friend for him. Thinking "somebody ought to do something for that kid" wasn't enough; I was somebody, and I did nothing. I did develop habits of being nice to my less popular classmates and of generally rooting for the underdog, and that's a start. I don't know how much of that behavior came from fifth grade and how much from my parents' good example. But whether he ever knew it or not, Billy was a friend for me.

Today around the world: June 10 is the Queen's birthday in Papua New Guinea. A college friend of mine, Lisa-la, served in PNG in the Peace Corps in the mid-90s. She told stories of centipedes as big as relay batons and of the lagoon you didn't swim in no matter how hot the weather because (A) there was an outhouse perched above the open water and (B) it was full of crocodiles. (The lagoon, not the outhouse. I think.)

Toot-Toot II

Brought to you by my late Grandma W, who left us about two years ago. Ever wondered how Band Name of the Day came to be? Read on.

Because summer is rerun season, I invite you to revisit The Toot-Toot Family Restaurant, originally posted 6/19/03.

Today around the world: June 9 is Murcia Autonomy Day in Spain.

Dial M for Masochism

Brought to you by voice menus, because our calls are very important to them.

OK, why is this: I call some service provider on the phone. The auto-voice tells me to enter my account number. I enter it, followed by the pound sign. Eventually I get connected to a person. And the first piece of information the person asks for is — can you guess? — my account number.

What the heck? Didn't I just enter it for them? Wasn't my entering it instrumental in our being connected? Don't they have some sort of computational device that can remember the number I entered until the service rep picks up? Or are they just messing with my head? If so, it's working.

Another thing about voice menus that drives me nuts is the commercials. Commercials! On the phone! I'm talking about those promotions for yet another great product or service offered by the company I've called. Why would I want another product from them when I've just called about a problem with the one I've got? Grr.

Still. If that's the worst thing that happens to me today, I'm probably doing all right.

Crispy wisdom du jour: The fortune cookie I got at lunch yesterday said, "Your many talents attract others, so be sure to use them." Use which — the talents or the others?

Today around the world: June 7 is when Norway celebrates Union Dissolution; Norway gained independence from Sweden in 1905.

Caveat Emptor

Brought to you by eBay Seller 3801 and his flair for drama.

A few days ago, I placed an eBay bid on a video. Then someone e-mailed me to warn me that the seller had bought this video from her and was selling a copy, not an original. Oh? This gave me pause. I reported the warning on a bulletin board frequented by other interested parties. Lo and behold, a couple other members, also bidders, had gotten the same message. We all dropped out of the bidding, and I think the auction went away for a day or two.

Soon, however, the video was back up for sale, but with the bidders' identities hidden this time. I read eBay feedback comments for both Seller and Warner, and while there appeared to be some friction between the two of them, who knows the whole story? I e-mailed each of them separately to ask what the deal was.

I never got the explanation I was looking for. However, Seller e-mailed several people offering sweetheart deals on the video to anyone who would forward Warner's contact information to him, since Warner had allegedly refused his attempts to get in touch by other means. This made me uncomfortable. I declined the offer, and so did several bulletin board compatriots who received it.

Then the question arose on the boards: Are you sure he's really doing anything wrong?

Good question. Seller had gotten plenty of positive feedback on previous eBay transactions. Also, for all I know, that video was original, authentic, and blessed by the star himself. Seller could have been completely aboveboard; I have no way to prove otherwise. I was almost willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this point.

But! When a problem arose, he handled it badly. He asked for contact info — tried to extort it, really — so he could continue an argument the other party had already bowed out of. That put me in a bad position. And I'm paranoid enough to think that if he's a weasel in his communication practices, he might just be a weasel in his business dealings, too.

Also, not all of his eBay feedback was positive — and the majority of the negative remarks questioned the authenticity of other videos he had sold. Red flag, anyone?

Result: No sale. Not to me, anyway, although there were three anonymous bids on the video last I saw. I think the auction ended last night, but I don't know who won. Several people reported Seller's nefarious conduct to eBay; no word on what results that got, either. So I don't know how this story ends. I'm glad I learned this lesson early, though: Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.

Today around the world: June 6 is D-Day.

Sweetest

Brought to you by Barnes & Noble.

sweet: DVDs on sale at Barnes & Noble: buy 2, get 1 free. I picked up two $20 ones and one $15 (all Christopher Guest titles: Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, This is Spinal Tap). Total with tax: @ $42.00.

sweeter: My B&N membership card entitled me to 10% off. Total after discount: @ $37.80.

sweetest: When I pulled out the membership card, not one but two forgotten B&N gift cards fell out of my wallet. One had about $15 dollars left on it and one had about $20. Total after gifts: @ $2.50, or about 83 cents per.

obvious conclusion: I am God's favorite.

Trivia question du jour:

When's the last time you saw a $50 bill?

I can't answer that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn't in this century. I may have received one as a Christmas or birthday gift a while back, which is just about the only possibility I can think of. It's been even longer than that since I worked retail, but I might have seen a couple from behind the counter.

Today around the world: June 3 is Foundation Day in Australia. Hey, vegemiterules, does that mean everyone wears a heavy coat of beige makeup all day? ;-)

Click "refresh" to get a new slogan every time. Then go to www.sloganizer.net/en to create one of your own.

I'm addicted to this thing!

Switchboard to Everywhere

Brought to you by Datura 1.0.

I got to taste a new flavor of noise music last night: Laptops Unplugged II: Electric Boogaloo. (Best sequel title ever!) Datura and eight other electronic musicians set up laptop computers in a small theater and improvised all at once. No conductor, no metronome, no melody, no harmony, no rhythm. Just sound. After about 20 minutes, a guy named Mike stood up and said, "Thank you!" and it was over.

The players scattered themselves around the theater, both at tables down front and up in the audience, but no one sat on the stage. The only thing on the stage was a spotlit chair with a microphone on it, which Mike was using to record the proceedings. Candles littered the tables, but most of the light came from the computer screens. It was very informal; audience members wandered the room freely, sitting down next to the musicians to peer at the oscillations on their screens, and my friend the Kerner strolled around with a small portable recorder. One spike-haired young woman in zebra-patterned sneakers knitted fiercely the whole time, producing at least six inches of fuzzy red and yellow scarf during the show.

One of the most interesting things about the performance was that it was collaborative, but not necessarily cooperative, and definitely not competitive. All nine guys did their thing at once, but no one's strain interfered with or detracted from anyone else's. Datura put it best when he called the result organic, like several bullfrogs croaking out their individual songs in a swamp. But these bullfrogs are made of silicon and plastic, and they dine on sampled sounds.

I'm avoiding describing what the noise sounded like because, well, I can't. That's the thing with noise music: you can't draw a nice neat staff with a treble clef and a bass clef on it and assign each note its place. You can't say whether the major chords outnumbered the minor or whether the rhythm held steady. None of those rules apply.

It's like — you know in a sci-fi movie how sometimes a mad scientist will translate the cosmic radiation from distant stars into sound waves to see whether we're receiving Bach etudes from space? Noise music is kind of like that. And just as with the cosmic tunes, every once in a while, just when you think you've found a pattern, a meaning, some balding god takes a slug of his beer and presses a button that changes the whole tune.

Or I could say that sometimes some of the tones sounded like underwater modems dialing the switchboard to everywhere. Or that some of them sounded like a marimba falling down an interminable flight of stairs. Cat hisses, amplifier feedback, shifting continents, wind in the willows. None of it was very loud or very jarring; it was everyday sound captured and fed back through each musician's unique filter: familiar, but not.

I guess my best suggestion would be to go listen to some — Datura has some mp3 samples on his site — and form your own opinion. (One of my previous attempts can be found here.) Try it! It's a buzz.

Today around the world: June 1 is International Children's Day in Angola, Australia, Cambodia, China, Laos, North Korea, Uruguay, and Vietnam.