Monthly Archives: November 2018

“breaker breaker one nine, we got an oil spill out on mile marker 1,000!” these are the kind of things i’ve been writing over the last seven years. yesterday’s blog post rolled the odometer to 1,000. can you believe it? since 2011 i’ve created and destroyed multiple electronic devices, told stories of love and loss, and basically chronicled life in the midwest. here are some blog entry titles coming up on the horizon:
The UNO Synth
My Favorite Life Detective
Wordy McWorderson

in ukraine it’s still not good to “get a pumpkin.” why? centuries ago if a woman wanted to reject a marriage proposal, she would hand her suitor a pumpkin– at least that’s how they handled courtship in ukraine. parents of attractive girls often had to grow a large pumpkin patch. i recently found out about this old tradition on everything is alive, the podcast that interviews inanimate objects. the last guest in october was annie the jack o’lantern.

fast people run like the wind. gassy people break like the wind. i can do both, but most of the time i walk like the wind (or a gentle breeze)– especially if there’s a sense of urgency. jenny asked me to check something on the computer while we were eating breakfast yesterday. when she wanted me to hurry, i slowly stood up, raised a finger to the ceiling, and said “i will walk like the wind!”

no, it wasn’t bumper to bumper– it was guitar to ukulele! it happened when jenny & i drove to joplin one weekend to celebrate all of the october birthdays in my family. it’s sorta like setting up 4 tin cans & knocking them all down with a baseball bat. after blowing out candles & eating cake, we went outside for a walk. sara (not an october birthday girl) grabbed her uke. i got my guitar. the cars zooming past us didn’t even notice as we jammed & sang, “HEY MOON, YOU’RE MY FAVORITE ROCK IN THE SKY!”

chaos & schizophrenia were thinly veiled when beep goes the weasel opened (in the loosest sense of the word) for motel mancini at OPLC’s fall festival trunk or treat last saturday. i often compare this kind of experience to early punk rock: most of the kid participants don’t know how to play, so they make noise instead of music. steve jones of the sex pistols once said, “the reason why we sounded like we did was because johnny rotten couldn’t sing & i couldn’t play”– and yet, they went on to record such hits as god save the queen, pretty vacant, and anarchy in the UK.