Yech…

First thing on my agenda at work: Visit the Pop Machine. Today it’s lit up like a Christmas tree… The only thing available is regular Coke. Okay, I guess. If I can’t have Coke Zero or Diet Coke or Dr. Pepper or root beer, I guess I’ll take a regular old Coke. I put my shiny quarters in the machine and push the button. I’m rewarded with the “rattle rattle thump” I expected. Hands a-tremble with anticipation I reach for my soda, only to find it covered in goo. Soda syrup, all over the can. Yech. Now I gotta wash my hands and the soda can before I can go sit down again…

Little things like that can take on greater dimensions on a Monday morning than at any other time. Is this the way my whole week is going to be? Is this an omen? Am I going to be stuck with second-rate products that are sticky all week? Or is it just that someone forgot to order pop?

E-Mail Count

On Monday last I started keeping track of my e-mails. Here’s how the final broke down:

Personal: 27
Work: 63
Humorous: 23
Political (Right-Wing): 2
Political (Left-Wing:) 2
Spam: 251

I know I missed a LOT of the spam messages as my home e-mail goes through a couple filters before I see it; I’d guess there were probably 50 more spam e-mails that didn’t make it on the list. And last week was the slowest week I’ve had at work in a decade or more – I’d guess that I usually get about twice that many work e-mails. But it was an interesting little experiment nonetheless.

Sniff Sniff

Some things just plain smell better than they taste. Coffee does not taste as good as it smells. Vanilla is another example. If pipe tobacco tasted as good as it smelled we’d all be smoking pipes. Perfume tastes pretty bad, until you get used to it. I discovered another one yesterday – Reuben sandwiches. Reubens smell better than they taste. My beloved Viennese Snowflake asked me to whomp together some Reubens for dinner last night. No problem! I like playing with my new Presto Grill doodad… I stood there, grilling all this wonderful food, smelling the wonderful aromas that come wafting my direction… It was great!

Then I sat down to eat the blessed thing. I’ve never liked Reubens, mind you, and I just cooked these up for my wife, but they smelled so good I just had to have one.

Blech. Bleeyah.

My beloved wife enjoyed her sandwich, and commented that she’d never had such a good Reuben. Meanwhile I’m trying to shave my tongue…

…Perchance to Dream

When I was a kid, I could sleep anywhere, anytime. It was great. The past ten years, though, have been rather trying. My general pattern has been to fall asleep at about eight at night, then wake up at 11 or 12, putter quietly around the house until 5 or 6 in the morning, then grab another hour or two of sleep before heading to work. It sucks, but you get used to it.

The past six months or so I’ve been taking Tylenol PM. The “PM” part implies that this will, yes indeedy, help you snooze. And it does! Or rather, it did…

For a while, I’d take a couple sleepy-pills and happily snooze for hours and hours on end. For the first time in ten years I needed an alarm clock. It was bliss! The past few weeks, though, have been different – I’ll take my sleepy pills, I’ll get sleepy, I’ll fall asleep, and three hours later BAM – I’m up again. Just like in the old days… But now, in addition to waking up at midnight or so, I’m so groggy from the sleepy-pills that I can’t do anything productive. All I can do is lay on the couch, whimpering softly, watching the Home Shopping Network, wondering where the remote went to…

Not sleeping much makes me grouchy and rather stupid indeed.

At the Car Wash

For me, one of the first signs of spring is the urge to get my car washed. There’s something about driving around a clean car that makes me feel wealthy, even if I am driving a 1992 Geo Metro (I think). Of course, this time of year, cars stay clean for about twelve minutes before you gotta go through a pothole full of runoff salt and mud (and possibly cow flop if you’re on one of the more rural avenues in town). We don’t have much of a garage, unfortunately, so our cars are always dusty anyway.

But for a minute there, I felt wealthy!

Olden Stuff

Dagmar and I trekked to the Sioux City Public Museum yesterday. ‘Twas an adventure indeed! I even took a shower.

I’ve only been to the Sioux City museum twice – the most memorable with Grandpa back in the 1970s. As a history major, that seems kinda odd to me. You’d think I’d hang out there more often…

Anyway, the most impressive thing to me was the museum building itself – a grand old house built in the late 1800s by a rich guy. Not only did the rich guy build this particular house, he also built half of the buildings in downtown Sioux City and the cable-cars that connected the whole mess before he moved to Seattle.

The stone for the exterior of the building was shipped in from somewhere in Nebraska, and all the woodwork on the inside is hand-carved from old-growth wood. The guy who was manning the front desk told us that some architects were in for a visit a few weeks ago and said that it would take over six million dollars to replicate the building.

The Sioux City Museum has purchased the old J.C. Penney building downtown and will be moving the museum into the new facility in a year and a half (or longer). They’ll then restore the old museum into a period home and give tours.

The beautiful thing about places like this in the Midwest is that the people who work there are there because they want to be. The guy at the front desk stopped what he was doing and gave Dagmar and I forty-five minute personal guided tour of the place, simply because we looked like we really were interested (which we were). That made the trip special.

My only critique of the museum is that they didn’t show any of the area’s rich musical history. Hopefully that’ll be remedied when they move into the more spacious J.C. Penney building.

Politics in Iowa

We get to elect a new governor this year. Fun fun. When I was a wee lad growing up in the Greater Brunsville Metropolitan Area, I quite honestly thought that being the governor of Iowa was like being on the Supreme Court. I thought you got elected for life.

In the past 38 years, Iowa has had three governors. Three. Count ’em. Republican Robert Ray was governor from 1969 to 1983 (to listen to my grandfather, you’d think Grandpa elected Mr. Ray all by himself). Mr. Ray was replaced by Republican Terry Brandstad, who served from 1983 to 1999. I met Mr. Branstad once. He’s shorter in person than he looks on TV. Our current governor, Democrat Tom Vilsack, has been in office since 1999 and is not running for that particular office again, though you may see his name come up nationally in a year or two. So, for thirty years, from 1969 to 1999, Iowa was led by two Republican governors.

Actually, looking at Iowa’s political history (which I found here), that’s not all that unusual. From 1846 to 1854 Iowa was Democrat. Then we had four years of Whig leadership, followed by the Republicans from 1858 to 1890 – that’s 32 years. Then four years of Democrat, followed by Republicans again from 1894 to 1933 – another 39 years. Democrats held office for the next six years, the another Republican dynasty lasting until 1957. In the late 50s and early 60s the two parties traded off until 1969, when Mr. Ray took office, starting a Republican run that would last until 1999.

That means that Democrats have held office in Iowa’s governorship for 36 years. Republicans were in office 120 years, and Whigs four years. (Mr. Bourke Hickenlooper, Republican, was governor from 1943 to 1945. That name brings forth a plethora of opportunities for campaign songs. “Vote for Hickenlooper – He’s Super-Duper.” The possibilities are endless.)

In spite of the Republican stranglehold on our governorship, I honestly thought Iowa was a Democratic state. I thought we kept electing Mr. Branstad out of pity – there’s no way he was gonna make it in farming, that’s for sure. My happy little dreamworld was rudely shattered when George W. Bush came within a hair of getting Iowa’s electoral college votes in the 2000 election. When Iowa went red in 2004 it scared the bejeezuz outta me. My wife and I thought seriously about moving to Canada, but in the end we opted to stay near our families here in Iowa. (We don’t really have the financial resources to pull off such a move anyway, to be honest.)

We’ve finally had a Democratic governor for the past seven years. Now we have to elect someone new. But who?

The Democratic candidates are:
Mike Blouin
Chet Culver
Ed Fallon
Sal Mohamed
Mark Yackle

The Republican candidates are:
Jim Nussle

The Libertarians are:
ChristyWelty

What do I know about these people? Not a whole lot, actually.

I’ve heard good things about Mr. Blouin. He’s already selected a running mate (an unusual move so early in a campaign) – Ms. Andy McGuire. Blouin has been State Economic Development Director, a Congressman, and has served as State Senator and State Representative.

Mr. Culver is widely regarded as being, well, not so bright. He was a teacher for a while, and is Secretary of State at the moment. His big claim to fame, though, is that he’s the son of ex-Senator John Culver.

I don’t know much about Mr. Fallon, but I have heard that he’s popular in Iowa’s three most populous counties. He has a very nifty web site, and has been a State Representative. (Mr. Blouin and Mr. Culver are currently getting most of the press around here. Therefore it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Mr. Fallon comes on strong at the end of the campaign, after the other two have weakened each other with their political jabs.)

Of all the candidates, the only one I’ve seen in person is Mr. Mohamed. He ran for congress in 2004, and was often seen on street corners all around Iowa, waving a flag, holding a sign saying “Vote for Mohamed.” The man gives the impression that he does all his own footwork. A native of Egypt, Mr. Mohamed moved to the United States in the 1970s and became a citizen in 1983. He has lived in Sioux City since 1991, working as a chemical engineer at a pharmaceutical company. (If you can’t tell, I actually read his web site – he’s the only candidate that has interested me enough to do that.) A widower, Mr. Mohamed’s son helps him campaign.

I’d never heard of Mr. Yackle until today, sadly enough. I found a web site that says he’s the mayor of Wallingford, Iowa (population 300). That’s about it, really… His web site isn’t finished yet. I did learn that he’s raised $300 in campaign contributions.

Mr. Nussle, and his running mate, Bob Vander Plaats, are Republicans.

The Libertarian Party has Ms. Welty on their slate – she’s served as Fairfield City Councilwoman and as the State Party Chair. I can’t really find any information on her on this nifty Interweb at all. I would, however, like to say that I’d vote Libertarian in every election if the Republicans didn’t scare me so much.

Who am I gonna vote for? Don’t you wish you knew. I shall never tell. I will say, however, that at this point Mr. Culver, Mr. Yackle and Mr. Nussle don’t look like particularly good bets. It’s so early in the campaign it’s pointless to speculate. So far I’ve heard good things about Mr. Blouin…

Well, it’s six-thirty at night. I’m going to go get something to eat, take some nice Tylenol PM, and hope for sleep. Wish me luck!

And I was in such a good mood…

In what seems like a determined effort to allow cruelty, the United States government, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, now claims that the legislation republican Senator John McCain drafted banning torture does not apply to Guantanamo Bay. Let me repeat that. Our government is trying to bypass a law banning torture. Again – our government is fighting to allow torture. I just can’t get that through my mind. From the Washington Post:

Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee’s lawyers described as “systematic torture.” – Washington Post

This is just plain miserable. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am in our nation’s leadership. I started doing a little research on the whole issue of torture (which is difficult to do whilst I’m supposed to be working) – I found a great article on the subject HERE. To be honest, I haven’t chewed through the whole document yet; it’s kinda long, and I can only read so much before my blood pressure starts rising.

On the lighter side…

If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see it with representation. – The Farmer’s Almanac

Serfs in the Middle Ages had to give up 20% of their income yearly and that made them virtual slaves. Today the average American pays 47%. What does that make Americans? – Kenneth Prazak, Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Illinois (Apr 14, 2000)

If Congress were to pass a flat tax, you’d simply pay a fixed percentage of your income, and you wouldn’t fill out any complicated forms, and there would be no loopholes for politically connected groups, and normal people would actually understand the tax laws, and giant talking broccoli stalks would come around and mow your lawn for free, because Congress is NOT going to pass a flat tax, you pathetic fool. – Dave Barry

A Toasted Jam

Once again an innocent foray to the clubs in Sioux City has gone slightly astray. It started innocently enough. Honest.

“Hey, Radloff, I’m on my normal bar stool. Come on down and have a beer.” Thus started the oddity. I regarded the voice on the phone with my normal amount of suspicion and paranoia for a second or two, pondering my alternatives. I could either continue on my set path and go home, put my jammies on, cook up a nice grilled peanut-butter, banana and honey sammich, or I could follow the voice and go have a beer. Hmmm… “I’ll be right there,” I said.

Ten minutes later I found myself ensconced in a local establishment, sipping on a nice Boulevard Wheat, chatting with my buddy (whose voice sounded a lot like the voice that came from my phone). That was at about ten after five. By five-thirty we were both ordering another drink. I like beer. By quarter to six I was empty again. A little voice in my head whispered “restraint.” I unhappily ordered a Diet Coke.

“Hey, there’s a new bar open just down the street. Wanna go check it out?” asked my buddy, sloshing a bit of his Guinness. (Actually, Guinness doesn’t really slosh all that well. It’s too thick. It kind of, well, sludges. That’s better. Sludge. He sludged a bit of his Guinness.)

“Sure,” I said. “Let me finish my sody-pop… Okay, I’m done. Let’s go.” My pal drained his sludge and off we went…

“I don’t like it,” I said when we got to the new place. “It’s too sterile.”

“I hate it,” said my buddy. “This sucks. Let’s have a beer.”

I opted against another Boulevard – they’re too good to drink lightly. Miller Lite in hand, my buddy and I found ourselves talking with some other friends. They thought the new bar was pretty cool. I have to admit, by the time I finished my beer my opinion of the place was changing a bit… But not that much. My friend was happy that they had Guinness there.

“Hey, finish your sludge,” I told my buddy. “I wanna go to the jam session at the Chesterfield.” With nary a whimper my friend drained his Guinness. I swear I saw him chewing on it. (They really should give you a fork with your Guinness. It’d make it easier to eat.) Off we went up the street to the Chesterfield.

Once in the door, we made our way to the bar and placed our orders. “Hey, isn’t that your wife?” asked my friend, pointing towards the door. Sure enough, my beloved Austrian Snickerdoodle was coming in the front door, big smile on her face.

“Snookums!” I hollered. “How are you?” I planted a kiss on her delicate little nose.

“Snookums?” said my friend.

“Snookums?” said the bartender.

“I thought I’d come down und see you,” said my Viennese Snowflake. “You alvays talk about how much fun dis jam night is…” She saw me reaching for my Miller Lite. “How are you feeling?” she continued. “Haf you had much to drink?”

“I’m feeling fine,” I said. “I’ve only had two beers. Oh, and two Miller Lites too.” With that, we pushed our way through the gaggle of musicians hanging around the front of the bar and found ourselves a table near the stage.

Conversation flowed freely as people gradually filtered in and joined us, lots of smiles and laughter. Eventually some musicians got up and started playing. Someone bought me another bottle of happiness. A different group of musicians took over on-stage. It was good. Someone bought me a very small glass full of a rather clear liquid. Smiling, I clinked glasses and gulped the drink. Somehow I thought it was gonna be… Well, I’m not sure just what I thought it was gonna be, but I didn’t think it was gonna be Tequila. By the time I got done gasping and clutching at my throat, I felt distinctly addlepated. Woozy, even. Here’s a picture of me being addlepated. I’m the guy not paying attention.

That, of course, was precisely the point in time when the bass player on stage yelled, “Radloff – time for you to play now. Get on up here.”

Before I could compose a reply, or even figure out which muscles to twitch in order to shake my head “no,” I was on stage and people were strapping a bass on me. Hmmm… This isn’t gonna be good. Whilst I’ve often had a beer during a gig, I really do try to avoid playing if I can’t say “is your second sister’s sixth zither strung, sir?” without giggling.

“Whaddaya wanna do?” asked the guitarist who joined me on stage, a guy I’ve met once before at a jam weeks ago. “Twelve-bar blues in C? Shall we just jam?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Blues?” asked the drummer. “You want me to play blues? I thought we were gonna play some Metallica or something.”

“I’ll start it,” I said. “You guys just hop in when you feel like it…”

It worked out beautifully! I started in a traditional blues bassline, the guys all jumped in on the song, and for fifteen or twenty seconds it was GREAT! The guitarist sparkled – he was playing some really cool stuff… Until he broke a string, less than thirty seconds into the jam. We limped through the rest of the song, keeping to simple blues…

“I have a spare string in my case,” said the guitarist. “It’ll take me about five minutes to change ’em.”

I stepped up to the microphone. “Hey, we have a broken string – anyone else out there wanna play a song or two?”

In just a few seconds another guitarist hopped on-stage. “Hey,” he said. “What do you say we play ‘Black Dog’ by Led Zeppelin, but let’s play it in a slow swing beat…” Now, you need to understand that “Black Dog” is a tricky song. It has lots of notes in it. Very, very quick titchy little notes. A lot of ’em. I haven’t even tried to play that song in years. I’m not even all that sure what key it’s in… The guitarist looked at me, “Do you know how to play it?”

I don’t know who answered that question, but it wasn’t me. It may have been the beer, but my bet is that it was the Tequila. I watched the words float out of my mouth… “Sure,”was the first word. “I know that song,” were the rest of the words. I opened my mouth again and waited, genuinely interested to know what was gonna come out next. “Go ahead and start it…”

And off we went! To my credit, I did figure out what key the song’s in by the time we got to the second chorus. By the last verse, I even had a handle on that whole “switch to B” thing. But, realistically, I’m pretty sure that I should NOT have attempted that song.

So, to the world in general, and to those who were in attendance at the Chesterfield last night, and particularly to those who were on stage at the time, you have my humblest apologies. I think I rated about a 9.3 on the Suckometer on that song. (Who knows… Maybe it wasn’t all that bad. But it sure felt lousy at the time. There’s a reason why I don’t mix booze with anything requiring thought. Much.)

Cars

This morning I had to drop off Dagmar’s car at the local tire-and-fix-it shop. The poor little car’s had a slow leak in one of the tires for months and months, and it’s time for an oil change anyway…

“You finally gonna get that tire fixed?” said the nice lady who pumps air the tire every week. “It’s about time!”

I nodded and smiled at her and made my way to the front counter. “I have an appointment to get the oil changed and the back tire fixed today at nine,” I said to the counter lady. “I called in yesterday and made the appointment.”

“What kind of car is it?” the lady asked. “They have two things written down. Is it a Geo Metro or a Ford Taurus?”

“Neither,” I said. “When they asked what car I had I automatically said ‘Geo Metro,’ since that’s what I drive. But this is my wife’s car. I thought it was a Taurus, but it’s really an Escort.”

The lady looked at me like I was an idiot. I couldn’t blame her for that. “Are you SURE it’s an Escort?” she asked. I nodded. She continued, “What year is it? They have 1992 written down. Is that right?”

“Um… Sure.” I said. “I think.”

“What do you know about the car?”

“It’s white.”

“That helps a lot.” She sighed. “We’ll have it done by ten.”

Headlines

You know how United States President G. Walker Bush has been saying for months that he’s not to blame for the lack of response to the Katrina crisis? His main excuse was ignorance – “No one told me that the levies could fail,” he repeats over and over. Well, they have a videotape of people telling him exactly that. “The levies could fail,” they told him in a conference three days before the hurricane hit. “This is serious.” (I’m making the quotes up, by the way. Paraphrasing, if you will.) Yet I feel confident in predicting that our government will continue to avoid responsibility.

The National Football League is having contract problems. The players want more money, and the owners don’t wanna give it to ’em. source I don’t understand the particulars – my knowledge of finance is about that of your average otter – but I do know that NFL players make a LOT of money already. Normally I come down on the side of the worker in any dispute such as this, but when the workers that are doing the moaning and complaining are making, on average, well over a million dollars a year (let me say that again – a million dollars a year) source, I tend to think they’re being adequately compensated. In fact, in order to pay for their million-dollar salaries, ticket prices have gone through the roof (I’ve never been able to afford to go to a game, probably never will), and now Monday Night Football is being broadcast on ESPN – a network you must pay to receive in spite of all the commercials they put in your face. I really and truly do enjoy watching football, but I get a bit upset that the NFL is starting to price itself out of the market.

Off I Go…

I was hoping to talk about more stuff, but I gotta head to the doctor now to find out what that pesky spot is on the X-ray of my lung. Wish me luck!

UPDATE:

The doctor says I’m fine. The pesky spot on my lung has pretty much gone away. They think it’s scar tissue from the pneumonia I had a few months ago. In any case, the doctor told me not to worry, and I don’t have to go back or anything.

Whew!

Spring?

This morning, for the first time, it felt like spring may be approaching. I live half a block from a Wendy’s and not even two blocks from Burger Time. Within just a few blocks of my house there’s also a steak buffet place, a rib shack, McDonalds, a hot dog stand, and Burger King. Add all these up, and when the wind blows from the south or the east I get really hungry in a hurry! If the wind blows from the north or the west the breeze carries a slightly different aroma – pit bull with a hint of gun powder. We don’t talk about that much. But this morning the air was absolutely still – a rarity in Iowa – and the ground wasn’t frozen. This meant that for once I could smell the damp earth, the mulch. It smelled like spring. Spring! It’s in the air, I tell ya!

Generally, this time of year is pretty mucky in Iowa. February and March are the snowiest months of the year here, but in early March the temperatures start to get a bit erratic. So the snow melts and turns to mud, then it snows again, but it melts right away and adds to the mud… The mud lasts until late April. This year, though, February was warm and dry. We have no snow on the ground, and no mud, either. It’s eerie.

A couple more weeks and I’ll be able to get my bike out of storage. A few more months and I’ll be able to ride it without looking like a hippie Eskimo on wheels. I’m getting a bit excited, I tell ya. But, a quick look at the forecast dumps muck on my bright outlook – freezing rain and snow again this weekend. *sigh*

It’s All a Bit Hazy…

I designed a label for pork tongues this morning. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything since then. I’ve eaten beef tongue (good stew meat, as long as you don’t know what you’re eating), but pig tongue? Where does that end up? What do you serve with pig tongue? Is that a white wine, or red?