Big Ol' Weekend

Now that I have a chance to catch my breath, I'll tell you a bit about my weekend. I'm sure that you're dying to hear about it.

Friday- off work at 11am, drove the wife to the train station then went to Trader Joe's, went home, ate hot dogs for dinner, played guitar, camped out in front of the TV 'til midnight and crashed.

Saturday- up at 5:45am, drove to Chicago with the mother-in-law, met the wife at the wife's sister's place, walked to the Newberry Library where the wife was presenting for the Illinois Medieval Association Conference. The theme was peace and conflict in medieval Europe. The wife presented along with her professor and another grad student. The wife's paper was "Didacticism and Domestic Conflict in the Middle English Lay le Freine". It was about the underlying etiquette lesson in the story. Very interesting. It all ties into her dissertation. She's pretty bright and learned. I was impressed.

Her presentation was at 9:30am. We stuck around for the rest of the day, had lunch there and checked out a couple more panels. I'm thinking of becomming a regular medieval studies groupie. I'm getting good at explaining that I'm not affiliated with any university and that I have no background in the field. I want to go to the grandad of all conferences in Kalamazoo. There's a restaurant there called "Bilbo's", and yes - they have a sandwich called the Gandolf!

We went out for tapas afterward with her prof and others. A plate of three different chorizos and a few sangrias later, and I was on top of the world. We got back to D-Town at about 10pm. I went to Otto's for the Bear Claw/Bog/Quatre Tete show. Bear Claw - not bad! Bog- very good, impressing me more and more each time. Quatratet- I didn't stay past the first couple songs (just enough energy for the drunken bike ride home).

Sunday - Brunch with Big John, Em and baby at the Hillside. Mmmmmmmmmmm!

All-in-all, a pretty darn good weekend.

Go Sports!

I finally made it to an NIU basketball game. The men's team, which is tied for first place in the MAC West, played Central Michigan (not a powerhouse, and I think the worst in the division). NIU won, but - ugh!

I'm no athlete, or know much about the game, but I can tell which team is playing like they care, and it wasn't the Huskies.

It was nice to see the new Convocation Center, and if it ever hosts enough people to fill it - I mean, for a sporting event, not the recent sold out Rascal Flats concert (Remember, it's DeKalb) - it would be impressive.

That Song Has Failed

I'm really questioning my ability to write a song. I always thought that I'd get better at it, but because of laziness and a low-key, hum-drum nature, I haven't really moved beyond my old mode of writing. I'm at my best when it just happens quickly, and I'm at my worst when I think about it too much. There's a point at which I can strike a balance, and can spend time re-working until something good happens. I then run the risk of trying to do too much, and it becomes an unwieldy clunker with too much going on.


I really admire my friends who are able to write good songs. Unfortunately, I'm also envious, which I feel guilty about, because I know that they work at it and write many, many, many bad songs before a good one comes along - at least that's what they tell me.

I don't claim to be in the same league with the songwriters that I know. I know that I'm not. I'm O.K. with that. I also know that I have written a few that I like and that I think are actually fairly good. I just want to write more of them, and different ones!

Wish me luck, or tell me to stop whining.

"Inka society had a serious mummy problem"

A great book, 1491, by Charles C. Mann, sums up with that sentence the problem that resulted from too many mummified rulers living on politically after death. They were never really considered dead, because they were immortal. They spoke through mediums. They also retained all of their palaces and worldly goods. A rapid succession of rulers, as a result of disease, left the Inka society with several mummies competing for power.

There's a lot to be said for the peaceful transition of power under the rule of law.

My Wife - Nerd Queen

Here's one of the reasons I love my wife. I'm looking through the bookmarks as I cruise to my favorite blogs and I find this:


http://houseoffame.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/


And she can actually read it.

Follow-up On The Cheese Dip

So, as you can see, I've lived through the cheese and sausage dip to blog again. I got about one third into it with the wife's help. She then told me to, "Get that out of this house!"

Mary Kay and someone else from work accepted the remainder. We'll see how it is after it's a few days old. I estimate its half-life to be about 5 days.

Here's A Tip...

A very "challenging" customer sent a nice tip to me this week. He suggested that I go drink with it. Instead, I bought some fancy-ass coffee to brew in the giant perk at work and a mess of fancy-ass cookies to go along with it. It wasn't enough for the whole staff to drink on. So, coffee that's better than the crap we normally drink and a mess of cookies will do.

Customer service can really suck, but sometimes a little acknowledgment of that fact helps.

Thanks, Mr. O'Meara!

This post goes out to all my HHE crew.

Un-funny Joke

There were a few funny comments on my last post. However, there was one that was NOT FUNNY.

It was not in bad taste. It was not offensive. It was wasn't really much of anything. It didn't even contain a joke that was so bad that it was funny because it was so bad. It had two elements that might make it funny: it related to my post and it was designed to poke fun at me. However, it was not funny. Let's examine it.

"Phew! Noone made this joke yet. Here goes... Joey, you'll always be my favorite dip. Yowza! Zing!"


The first thing that we notice is that the author has already come to the conclusion himself that it isn't funny. This is shown by the way that he immediately places a crutch under it with his exclamation, "Phew!" and then follows with a set-up, complete with the use of the elipsis as a sort of drum roll. While it catches our attention and makes us think that we're about to hear something very funny (perhaps even something funny that we've thought of ourselves in the short time that it took to move our eyes from the previous comment to this one), it, in itself, is not very funny. It takes a moment, but then we then realize that it was designed to be so stupid that it's funny.

Here's the main flaw. Reading the joke is like driving quickly through a small town that you barely noticed. It's so unremarkable that you have to wonder for a moment what it is that you just saw, but you're not really interested enough to do more than glance into the rear-view mirror. Even then, you're satisfied, even if you can't quite make out the prominent features. You continue on, unimpressed.

We then get a little treat at the very end. A couple of cute little words that are there to let us know that we're all in on the joke that the joke itself isn't funny. Normally, "Yowza!" and "Zing!" are fun, just on their own, but in this context, they become nothing more than the most entertaining part of the whole un-funny joke/comment. The problem is that, as we already know, the core of the joke/comment is much too bland to accomplish its purpose. This is all made worse by the possibility that come-backs to the joke are likey to be funnier. Simply stating that the joke is cheesy could accidentally be said without even being intened to be funny, and still be funnier than the joke.

While I appreciate the time spent by the author to comment on my blog, a funny comment would have been more appreciated. Frankly, I feel a little cheated. I see that he posts much funnier comments on e-pissy. Therefore, I have to assume that he saves all of his best material for that. It makes sense, being that the audience on e-pissy is larger than my blog. It's just that I guess that I expected more from a friend.

Gastroblog

Me and the wife had a date with the O'Garverty's last night. We all were hesitant to admit it, but we like the burgers at the Ruby Tuesday. So, we went there.

I had a bacon-jack burger. Awesome. Fries, also awesome. Beer - Bud.

For my Super Bowl viewing, I'm making the following dip for my favorite tortilla chips:

1 lb of Bob Evans Extra Spicy sausage
16 ounces of Velveeta
1 jar of chunky, spicy salsa

blend well and charge up the defib.

Ask The Old Dog

Norm Chompski asks:

Dear Old Dog,

I'm currently in a rock and roll band in the process of recording our first album. It's been quite a process but ultimately very rewarding.

The thing is, we are having trouble deciding on a name. Every few months, we'll change it, and say it's final, and announce it to everybody--and then change it again.

What can we do about this pickle?

_________________

Well, Norm Chompski, I think that you're doing the right thing. Not only are you probably getting some good feedback from people about your name along the way, it also shows that you're willing to try out new things in public view - not only material, but the process of creating and forming the band. It's interesting and works on a deeper level than simply picking a name that "sounds good" and in vogue, appealing to the popular preference for form over substance.
It's obvious that you are a clueless, pretentious weenie who is trying to impress everyone by dropping hints as to who your favorite author is; otherwise, you would have recognized all of this. Since the notion of choosing a name with meaning has escaped you, why don't you just name your band "Tarantino" to show everyone how cool it is that you're into Tarantino films. Or how about, "Rage Against The Machine"? That would show how rebelious and political you are. Oh, wait! I forgot that some other shitty band already took that name.

I hope that I've helped you, Norm. Good luck with the band.