First, the power window on my car is broken. It won’t go up unless I give it a manual assist. Difficult in traffic, particularly since it’s a manual transmission. I knew it must be time for auto repairs, I was just starting to think I was going to get my credit card paid off. Dang.

I got a haircut on Saturday. The woman who cuts my hair is tiny, pierced and tattooed. She’s a very young single mom with two kids a little younger than mine. We talk about parenting. We pretty much see things eye to eye. She’s great. But she forgot to trim my ear hairs. One of the things age does to you is destroy your close up eyesight about the same time it starts producing hairs in places where they never really grew that much before. I’m sure you’ve all seen the look. So there I am walking around with pretty much white sidewalls and long curly hairs, the only dark ones on my head, are sticking out from the tops of my massive pink ears. I think your ears continue to grow as you get older as well. Think about Lyndon Johnson. I put my reading glasses on and looked in the mirror and realized the hairs in my nostrils needed a good trim as well. So I says to myself, I wonder what google has to say about nose hair. I found toys and art. As well as a dizzying array of devices devoted keeping your nostrils clean cut. Remember the scene in L. A. Confidential when the chief or whoever was trimming his nose hairs just before they hung him out of the window? That really impressed me. Rich guys almost never have those hairs. Do their barbers remember to trim them? Do they wax? Are they rich because they’re compulsively well groomed or is it the other way around?
The nose hair movie reminds that I stated earlier that I was going to explain my career as an in-betweener. I’ll get to that tomorrow.
Later, youngsters.

I have submitted the dreaded FAFSA form. It’s the one you fill out for financial aid for college. I didn’t realize that it gave you an instant estimate of how much you’ll have to pony up for the year. My estimate came to all of it. L has already gotten some scholarship money from Iowa State, her school of choice, but there’s no longer any reciprocity between Minnesota and Iowa, so out-state tuition is a bitch. I’ve tried to make her aware that we don’t have much to contribute, and what she can’t come up with she’ll have to borrow, but she’s determined. She could go to a smaller school in Wisconsin for less than half the dough, but ISU is her dream school. The only way I can justify it is that she wants to be a graphic designer (I slapped her hands everytime I saw her doing artwork but it didn’t work) and they have a great program there.
I never realize Iowa State was so close, just a little over three hours straight down I35. Nor did I realize what a beautiful campus it is. It’s very compact with an excellent layout of roads and beautiful landscaping. Right there in the middle of the cornfields. Although it specializes in left brained pursuits like engineering and has a great ag school, it also is very strong in design and the visual arts. And I understand the smell of pig shit isn’t completely overpowering. Minnesotan’s have a huge chip on their shoulders about Iowa, we think we’re so much more cultured and sophisticated, but we’re not.

Where Do You Fall on the Political Compass?

Click here to take the test.

My brother sent me this. He’s a guy with very interesting politics. He’s a retired Army Lt. Colonol and is a pretty hard core liberal. I think that’s a rare breed. Here’s my score. More liberal and less authoritarian than I would have thought.

Here’s a reference from the site, I guess these are hypothetical, since Hitler and Stalin obviously didn’t actually take the test. Well maybe Hitler did in his villa in Argentina, where he’s living with Elvis.

You may refer to me as Gandhi.

On another note, it’s been a very long time since L has asked me for help with her math. I wasn’t bad at math in High School, but this is so far beyond me that it could be inscribed on an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.

My depiction of the corporate chain of command. I’m not the littlest dog, but I’m the littlest dog that’s not in a union. Shit rolls downhill and has a helluva lot of momentum built up by the time it hits me. I was recently in a meeting with the guy three rungs up the latter from me, so a big wheel, and he was trying to do the frank and honest discussion thing about how the biz can be improved. I brought up one of my many pet peeves, something that we do wrong in the most basic no-brainer way. He heard a couple of buzz words and came back with an answer that was so vaguely related to what I was talking about, I might as well have been speaking Urdu. I tried to explain myself but I’m sure I sounded like a crazed techno babbler to him. Over the years there have been so many times that they’ve rolled shit out and I’ve predicted that it wouldn’t work and that it was a vast waste of money, if I’d just gotten on the phone with the CEO I could have saved the company millions. Or I would have gotten fired for not being a positive team player! My motto is. “keep your head down and be quick on your feet to dodge the turd slides.”

Something from the sketchbook. I started drawing again. This image is from my imagination without reference material. Obviously I couldn’t remember what a parrot looks like.

Music. Latin, Irish, Classical, Cajun, Reggae and Red Neck. The accordian is a rock and roll instrument. Soft spot for swamp boogie music that rides the Mystery Train through Chuck and Elvis and Bo and Mississippi Fred and John Lee. Memphis in the Meantime Baby. With a Telecaster turned up to ten. John Hammond sitting at his daddy’s knee getting Southern Fried. Beat me Daddy Eight to the Bar. And Twelve Bars on Bourbon Street. Working Man’s Dead. Sobering up, crashing into John Hiatt singing Stood Up about sobering up drying out with John for almost twenty years and thinking Bring the Family was the pinnacle and then last year Beneath This Gruff Exterior with songs about the creative process and taking a crap or dog love or mortality. And Sonny Landreth making an electric guitar sound like a caliope. Sonny Landreth doing things that seem to defy the laws of guitar playing. John Hiatt has probably written over seven hundred songs and he is going strong. Listen.

Excerpt from a West Wing episode
President Bartlet is confronting a Dr. Laura like talk show host in the White House.

President Bartlet: Forgive me Dr. Jacobs, are you an M.D.?

Jacobs: A Ph.D.

Bartlet: A Ph.D.?

Jacobs: Yes, sir.

Bartlet: Psychology?

Jacobs: No sir.

Bartlet: Theology?

Jacobs: No.

Bartlet: Social work?

Jacobs: No. I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

Bartlet: I’m asking ’cause on your show, people call in for advice, and you go by the name of “Dr.” Jacobs on your show, and I didn’t know if maybe your listeners were confused by that and assumed you had advanced training in psychology, theology or health care.

Jacobs: I don’t believe they are confused, no, sir.

Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

Jacobs: I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.

Bartlet: Yes, it does, Leviticus.

Jacobs: 18.22

Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?

While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it OK to call the police?

Here’s one that’s really important ’cause we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

Does the whole town have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side-by-side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you?

One last thing, while you may mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-ass Club. In this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.

The StarTribune: CLIMAX, MINN. — It may be the town’s slogan, but it doesn’t meet the approval of the superintendent, who has placed a school ban on the T-shirts that read: “Climax — More than just a feeling.” Read more
It turns out that Climax, which is in the middle of nowhere north of my hometown in Northwestern Minnesota, is near another town named Fertile. Headline in local paper: “Fertile Woman Dies in Climax” That might be a rural urban legend but up in the Red River Valley they swear it’s true.
That brings to mind one of my favorite typographical jokes. Maybe the only one. I use this story when trying to convey the importance of good spacing in typography. Apparently a headline was written for a newspaper article about a governor exercising his veto power. It read, “Governor’s Pen is a Sword.” But they got some of the word spacing a little to tight.
You know you are a Minnesotan if you can pronounce Wayzata (and you’re from my nieghborhood if you think the people who live there are all rich bastards), Minnetonka, Minnewaska, Pokegama, and Winnebigoshish. Or you pronounce Mille Lacs “Mill Lacks” and Nicollet “Nicklet.” I used to tend bar on the corner of 26th and Nicollet and people would call me up and say “Are you on Nickolay Avenue?” “You’re not from around here are you?”
If I remember my geographic name jokes correctly I think my readers from Pennsylvania might have a contribution here. And of course Canadian place names are funny all by themselves. I mean, Moose Jaw?

I wasn’t old enough to pick up on my sister’s romantic life as a teenager, she was in college by the time I was 5. So now that I live in a housefull of women, including two teenagers, I’m getting a new perspective on the boy-girl thing. I know that the archtypical role of the father of young girls is to hate teenage boys, but lately I’m feeling sorry for them. I see them becoming infatuated and then watch my daughters drive them crazy. Someone told me that when young girls have a good relationship with their fathers, they don’t throw themselves into serious relationships with the first boy that comes along. I’ve always felt like I was kind of stoopid about the way I deal with my children, but maybe not. Anyway I’m very proud that these girls seem to be able to handle themselves well in the war between the sexes. I could elaborate with some hilarious examples but that would make for an icy atmosphere here on the edge of the graveyard if they found out I’m publicizing the details of their love lives.
Have a week!

OK sorry about the long post, I know no one reads them, but I had to do it anyway. Thanks to those who took the time.
Now I’m going to rant.
The youngest daughter is a sophmore in High School. She’s taking AP (advanced placement) Biology, well known as one of the toughest classes you can take at her school. She’s gotten through one semester without totally gutting her GPA and has come to terms with me not letting her drop it. But here’s the problem. They are currently studying evolution. There is a kid in her class that’s an Evangelical literal interpreter of the Bible. He’s on a mission to disprove Darwin. In class. I feel for the teacher. This little ass munch is continually interupting with info from some book he’s read that gives the fundamentalist rebuttal to Darwin’s theory. One of the things he’s brought up is “the odds against evolution occurring.” OK, I play a little poker and I think I understand probabilities a little. How in the name of Des Cartes does one figure those odds??? This little shit is spewing his ignorance in a class that’s supposed to be teaching science. If he doesn’t care to hear the scientific point of view, then he should go take comparitive religion if he wants to discuss and debate. I try to have an open mind about the religious beliefs of others. Everyone gets to make up there own story about the stuff that’s beyond human understanding. I’d just ask mister world created in seven days to shut up and listen and let those who might be interested in the accepted view of science on the origin of species learn something. My kid is in class trying to learn. You can spew your religious beliefs elsewhere, thank you very much!
I personally think that evolution and Christianity aren’t mutually exclusive beliefs. You just have to understand that some things are beyond human understanding. Evolution explains the whole thing in terms of scientific evidence that is comprehendable by us mere mortals. If the odds, however they figure them, are so high against that carbon atom hooking up with that hydrogen atom and getting things going, then doesn’t that speak to the hand of higher power being involved. I just wish the teacher was able in this scary world to tell the misguided little Bible pounder to shut up and let her teach. I mean, shit, it’s just a theory, right?