Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to avoiding being hit by an Audi

In which your humble narrator marvels at the natives' Jekyll and Hyde behavior when it comes to anything with wheels. 

Minnesotans are not friendly. They are "nice." They will tell you this themselves. There's an entire cottage industry of "Minnesota Nice" merchandise and paraphernalia. There's a freakin' Wikipedia page for Minnesota Nice! But as best as I can tell, the niceness generally only means that they will grudgingly answer direct questions put to them and they generally refrain from spitting on strangers.

All bets are off when you put these people on wheels. Cars, bikes, roller blades, put a Twin Citizen on wheels... and well, you have a wheeled menace. Amazingly this extends even to shopping carts. Back in my old Rust-Belt, Ohio home, people sort of moved out of the way in the Kroger so you could pass by them. Not here. Here, people are so militantly resistant to admitting that other human beings exist in the universe (when wheels are involved) that they will park their carts in the middle of the damn aisle and pretend you don't exist while you glare at them. Then you finally clear your throat and say "Pardon me," and the nasty local glares at you, because you've interrupted her careful meditation on Frosted Spelt Germ Puffs.

Cyclists here constantly write letters to the editors of numerous local publications about bastard car drivers and how we all have to share the road. Of course I've seen one cyclist stop at a stop sign in the last 60 days. Three have failed to stop and turned left in front of my car while I was stopped at the stop sign.

And the drivers are terrible. After an awful winter, the warm weather has made people even more hell-bent on driving like maniacs now that there's no ice or snow to contend with. Drunk driving is tolerated to a degree that's both embarrassing and completely contradictory to our image as a northern socialist nanny-state. Ten people died this past weekend in traffic accidents. In a metro area of 3.5 million, that's high.

Last session, the legislature passed a ban on texting while driving. This was before Oprah's crusade too. But since we only have about 7 highway patrol officers nobody pays a damn bit of attention.

Wheels go on, brains go off.

Those Sour Grapes Will Make a Lovely Whine

In which your humble narrator pummels the body politic with his mad metaphorical skills.

I don't usually get all blog-politicky but certain events have transpired which call for three minor points to be made.

1. The Health Care bill passed. This means that my uninsured, pre-existing conditioned Mom will be able to purchase insurance again. This means that the 8.7% of my brain that is in charge of worrying about Mom being hit by a truck full of organ thieves and having tens of thousands of dollars in unpayable medical bills can now be reassigned to worrying about zombies, tornadoes and Peter Fonda.
2. For my Republican friends (and you, Grandma): It's not actually a subversion of democracy when congressional majorities pass legislation which is then signed by a president who won a clear majority of votes. When your side wins you get to start wars and send free platinum toilets to bank executives and stuff. When we win we get to do stuff too. 
3. I look absolutely smashing in the official socialist paradise jumpsuit that the neighborhood commisar delivered to the house yesterday. Long live the Apparatus of State!

Do you remember that one kid in the neighborhood when you were growing up that nobody wanted to play with because he was constantly changing the rules? If you were playing basketball and you made a shot, it didn't count because that kid would immediately call a foul or invent a rule that said nothing that touched the rim counted for a point or maybe that you were actually playing lacrosse and by making the basket you just earned -43 points. But if that kid had the ball, you weren't allowed to defend the basket because he just remembered that playing defense contravenes the Basketball Convention of 1896. So you were supposed to just lie down on the ground and let that kid take as many shots as he wanted.

That kid is now a Republican member of Congress.

Winterize this!

In which your humble narrator tries to act like a local-born Minnesota person and muses freely on the topic of the weather. 

Now that I'm slowly emerging from the fog of Pie Day, Thanksgiving and Pie for Breakfast Day I can begin to fret about all the stuff that needs to be done to get ready for winter. Usually, this being Minnesota, Land of Frozen Tundra and passive-aggressive Scandinavians, we're all set for winter by Thanksgiving because November is a winter month (and so is April most of the time). Fortunately it's a well established fact that cold weather is highly correlated with moral fiber and excellent character. This is why the upper Midwest is awesome and Florida is a hell hole of moral weakness and general turpitude.

But this year, despite the weird rash of accumulating snow in October, it's been unseasonably warm, leading to all sorts of licentiousness, gluttony and sloth the likes of which we rarely see in the frigid north. So I haven't got the insulation I bought stuffed into the appropriate crevices in the attic, nor have I put cling film on the upstairs windows. We were all excited when we bought our house because it had replacement windows. Then we moved in. And now we know that we have the absolute worst replacement windows in the history of windowdom. They are shite. Especially because the cheap bastards that put them in cut costs by only putting single-pane windows in upstairs... which has only one heat vent... strategically located in the bathroom... in the shower. I like a cold bedroom, so it's not too big of a deal most of the time. However, I hate having to wipe the windows off every day after we shower (no exhaust vent either). So I've got to do the window film thing upstairs which means that I have to find the hair dryer that a friend of ours left at our old condo two years ago.

Also I still haven't raked the leaves in the back yard. They came off of the neighbor's tree so I'm afraid it might be socialistic if I raked them for him. Glenn Beck's website doesn't seem to offer any guidance on the issue.

So I've got a ton of crap to do all of which I'll start as soon as I get my butt off the couch. I predict that will occur sometime tomorrow.

My Mom made me go to Girl Scout Camp... which wouldn't have been so bad if I weren't a boy

In which your humble narrator discusses the requirements that must be met to keep his house from disintegrating, discusses home improvement peer-pressure, creeping socialism and imparts a moral he learned when his mother made him go to Girl Scout Camp.


On Child #1's birthday a few weeks ago I was all set to have a new water heater installed. Our water heater is over 20 years old. The thermostat seems to be going (some showers are tepid, some are searing) We've been informed that the bottom could drop out at any moment, flooding the basement with scalding hot water and potentially burning the cats' feet if they were unfortunate to be using the litter box at the time. In the morning, our plumber arrives with new water heater in truck and goes down to the basement to start draining the old one, and unhooking the venting whereupon he discovers that we don't have a metal-lined chimney. Instead, (like virtually all houses built before 1975) we have a clay liner.

"According to code I can't put in a new water heater until you have the chimney lined," he says.
"Boo!" says I.
"You have to get it lined so that you don't have carbon monoxide leak into your house," says he, "Everyone else has a metal liner in their chimney," he told me, trying to peer-pressure me into it.
"But I don't believe in code! I'm a Maverick. I've gone rogue! This is socialism! I don't care what other people are doing! The government can't tell me how to line my chimney!"

But he was implacable. So we're supposed to have the chimney lined this week. And only then can we get a new water heater. Here I thought I might finally get to spend some money on something enjoyable for the house, but no. I'm gonna get me some metal tubing that I'll never see... the only purpose of which is to save me and my family from death by carbon monoxide. Lame.

So there's that indignity. I've been forced to spend money on another boring mechanical update. I remain sanguine, however with the comfort of a lesson learned many years ago when my mother made me go to Girl Scout Camp.You see, my mother was a semi-professional Girl Scout Leader and as such was entitled to free day-care at Girl Scout Camp in 1988. No problem for my sister, an acknowledged girl, but somewhat more tricky for me, a distinctly masculine character. So for a week I, and four other unfortunate boys were segregated into a "boy's unit" (No, really! That's what they called it! I didn't find this funny when I was 9, but there were adults who should have known better.) at Girl Scout Camp.

The theme of camp was "The Olympics" as they were happening in Seoul at about the same time. So at the end of the week there was a flag ceremony and a "games" wherein the girls did potato sack races and jumped rope or something. The boys weren't invited to the games but we were at the flag ceremony. Each unit (tee-hee) had constructed a flag for their assigned country (We were Belgium... a manly land if ever there was one) and we paraded them around while they played 'Symphony for the Common Man.'

And then the head Girl Scout Leaders judged who had the best flag. We won. And the girls booed. And hissed, like a den of vipers.

So not only were we poor boys forced to go to Girl Scout camp in the first place, but when we hoisted the most impressive flag, we were booed by hundred of girls.

Fortunately none of us were particularly traumatized because we knew that all the girls had cooties. Also it was fun to see the leaders yell at them.

My mother is a bit sensitive when I tell this story (Along the lines of "Here we go, how else did I ruin your childhood?). Which is, of course, the best part of telling it. Which brings us to the moral of our story.

There is virtually no experience annoying/stupid/humiliating enough that it doesn't end up being worth complaining about for the rest of your life. And if you enjoy complaining as much as I do... well then...

Bliss.

Socialism in our Schools

In which your humble narrator ponders the red menace.

So the president is giving a speech to the nation's school children next week. It's being broadcast on C-Span and the White House website. Silly old me, I presumed it was going to be a pretty typical "politico speaks to the youths" type address: "study hard, you're our future, lead the way, don't smoke doobies," kind of speech.

MPR's Tom Weber reported today that the Fergus Falls school district was taking a cautious approach:

"Some districts, like Fergus Falls, are not showing the speech live - but will instead tape it and have administrators review it to see if it's appropriate to show later."

And I thought: "Really? To make sure he doesn't tell any off-color jokes?"