Category Archives: Uncategorized

Best Experienced With:       Simon & Garfunkle;          The Boxer (live version…the one with all the lyrics)

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested music in a new browser window.    The Central Park version of “The Boxer”.   The version with all the lyrics.   The best version with ‘after changes upon changes we are more or less the same.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DglHU04rQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DglHU04rQ

This is the last thingamagig I will be able to write for the next six months and, unlike all but nine of the other three hundred posts here, it tells something real about my life.   The birthday stuff was true three weeks ago and all the animal stories are real.    The rest is nonsense and business theory.   Thanks for reading.   I enjoy our time together and will miss these visits over the next six months while I laser focus on my career adventures and learning how to operate my new Wolverine-like stabbing hands.

Raised in the Catholic faith, I never understood the value of “giving something up” for Lent.    Many viewed it as an excellent opportunity to lean up for the mountains of candy that arrive at the end of Lent.   I viewed my God as a giving God, one who would not want me to have less on a daily basis.  My God wants me to have more.    Not less.

Moreover, I view the world through long event horizon goggles and was aware even at a young age that part of growing into the older “you” is giving things up as the years roll by.     Giving them up and finding a suitable, age appropriate replacement.   Neither Silvio Berlusconi nor Newt Gingrich have ever learned this lesson.   That’s a shame.

The items listed below are the three primary replacements from the past two decades; rife with digressions and tangents, all coming to a suitable Seinfeldesque conclusion.   This is a ridiculously long winded account as to why I am giving up beer on August 15.   Accompanied by a beautiful Simon & Garfunkel tune.

Change One (Giving up Running)

I’ve never been called “svelte” or “gangly”.  In fact, my friend KB calls me refrigerator box as a nickname.    This is a suitable nickname.   No one has ever said or written my God given name in the same sentence with the phrase “naturally gifted athlete”.   Or the same paragraph.   Have always been the “just happy to be there” person in athletics.   The “happy to be there” person with a deep and abiding love of hitting other people.  Which is why, years and years ago, football was a far better choice than soccer.

My first football injury was “ridiculously swollen knuckles”, known as RSK Syndrome in the New England Journal of Medicine.   Visited our family GP at thirteen and Dr. McEvoy diagnosed me with arthritis.   Gave me the following choices:

1. Stay away from the cold and damp.
2. Rub a little dirt in it.

Chose “B” and continued along with my mediocre football adventures:  getting into the game whenever possible and hitting as many folks as possible while in the game.   That was great fun because hitting people is great fun.

Despite my non-svelteness, have always adored running.   I am quite a slow runner, when not being chased, yet love running nonetheless. As with most of my athletic pursuits, I am just happy to be there.  In 1994, with both knees and both hips hurting after one of the slowest four mile runs in the history of mankind in this universe or any other universe, chose to visit an orthopod and see if he could RX anything for the pain.   He took a full set of films, circled the really nasty parts and we had a conversation that resembled this:

Me:   “And…….?”

Him:  “Has anyone ever told you that you have arthritis?”

Me.  “Yep.   Back when I was thirteen”

Him:  “Then why the hell are you still running?   You are not a small man and your joints are all messed up.   You are a moron.   Now get out of my office.   Moron”

And that’s why I gave up running in 1994.

Change Two (Giving up Cheese)

Raise your hand if you adore cheese.    Standard party fare here at Chez Mulligan for years was a dozen bottles of tasty red Malbec or a Meritage and a five pound lump of parmesan cheese on a plate.   No knife.    You had to rip off chunks of parmesan cheese with your fingers to get that red wine/cheese taste sensation.     Mmmmmmm.

Cheese.

Of the various international surf trips I have had the good fortune of attending, the El Salvador surf trip was the best.   Surfing El Salvador was magnificent.

Went on a solo surf trip to Costa Rica in 1994 and for some odd reason we had a layover in San Salvador, El Salvador.   As the plane left San Salvador for San Jose, Costa Rica we banked over El Salvador’s Costa del Sol.   Below were miles and miles of beautiful waves with no riders.   Mostly because the El Salvador civil war had ended two years earlier and it is challenging to build back your tourist base after a civil war.    And especially when that civil war involved military death squads murdering Caucasian nuns and generally exhibiting poor behavior and ill developed social skills.

Marvin, Eb, and I had a week of surfing amazing waves like the one pictured below with no other gringos competing for the waves.   Because most gringos are sissies.   This is why Disneyland and those dolphin petting pens in Florida exist as vacation destinations.  Three men with sawed off shotguns and one man with an AK-47 guarded our condominium on the Costa Del Sol each evening and we three spent our evening time playing cards.  You did not want to head out at night in El Salvador in 1995.  Not even for a cup of sugar.

The most dangerous thing about El Salvador was not the newly jobless, well-armed, ex-rebels roaming the countryside.  The most dangerous thing about El Salvador was not the ten foot day we caught at Zunzal, where we three were destroyed over and over and over again.  The most dangerous thing about El Salvador was the food.   Marvin limited his daily meals to potted meat, perhaps the most nauseating thing ever killed and canned by mankind.  Eb and I ate whatever we wanted and on day four I paid for this choice dearly.    No details, suffice it to say I lay curled up in a fetal position in the back of our rental car as we looked for great surf spots, paddled out with my friends, and then spent more hours in a fetal position as we drove back to home base.     Did not see much of the El Salvadoran road scenery.

For years after that El Salvador trip, would get laid low once or twice a year by what I assumed was a parasite that my general practitioner was never able to knock back with drugs or a stern talking to.   These episodes would, again, leave me in the fetal potion in various locals around the house (bed, floor, bathroom floor, living room floor, kitchen floor, ad infinitum) and they always went away on their own after eight to ten days.

Ended up at Scripps Green in spring of 2010 for five days with what I thought was a particularly strong El Salvadoran parasite rebellion.     Since I went to public school, I was off by several thousand miles with my diagnosis:  the El Salvadoran parasite rebellion was, in fact, a full on colon rebellion.    My colon and part of my bladder were feeling rambunctious and wanted to live the life of Jack Kerouac.  Never being one to hold anyone or anything back from their dreams, I allowed them to leave on July 15, 2010.

Am not sure where my colon and bladder parts went or how they are doing.  All I do know is that my stay at Scripps Green hospital from July 15 to July 20 allowed me to get this photo:

And that is a damn fine photo.    Also allowed me to take this one as well.   Once they told me it was simply a rebellious colon and not anything dangerous or terminal, we turned my room into a party room.   Was a damn fun five days at Scripps Green

The photo above would have been my 2010 holiday card, had I not found a random pen of sheep with breast implants in November, 2010.    The sheep with breast implants became the 2010 holiday card because my friend CC blessed me with the “SILF” shirt several years back and since the day he handed it to me in Texas, that “SILF” shirt has been a conversation starter.    The “SILF” shirt is the finest shirt in the galaxy.   Thank you, CC.

I digress.     Back to Change Two and away from the sheep.    When part of your colon rebels and chooses to move on to greener pastures, it behooves you to take a close look at your dietary choices.   It forces you to make more age appropriate choices and colonic appropriate choices that will encourage the rest of your organs to stick around for a while longer.     Moreover, ten days with a catheter reaching into your rebellious bladder as it heals is precisely ten days too long to have a catheter.   Going to digress a bit more.

Because it is a fantastic story.

Took a cab home from Scripps Green after the left hemicolectomy on July 20, 2010.  Mostly because it allowed me to type the following line today:  “I took a cab home from Scripps Green after the left hemicolectomy on July 20, 2010”    No one else in this universe can type that line, now….. or for centuries to come.    Marketing folks:  that is known as a differentiating benefit.      Write that down.    It is unique.

Before I left Scripps Green, the discharging nurse showed me how to change the bag attached to the catheter to a leg mounted bag and then back to a larger bag that would hang on m bag for the additional five days after the five days I spent at Scripps.    She explained that even though I had gone to public school in Cleveland, I would be able to easily make the switch upon arriving home…allowing me to recuperate comfortably in bed on m painkillers.    Watching “COPS” marathons on cable TV.   In high definition.

The discharging nurse did not know about the cat menagerie.

The cab dropped me off and I got into my house with the leg bag still firmly affixed to the left thigh.    Crossed that off the “to do” list.    Got into bed, affixed the larger bag to one of the bed posts and made the valve switchover….effortlessly.    Crossed that off the “to do” list.     Reclined back into the seven thousand pillows I keep at the head of bed and thought to myself “damn….that was easier than conquering France or getting on “Girls Gone Wild in Cancun”.   Until thirteen minutes later when I looked to the left and down and saw all five cats playing tetherball with the bag of pee.

I’ve seen seven million four hundred thousand three hundred fourteen things in the last few decades that made me laugh like a hyena.   None top that feline pee bag tetherball game.   I switched back to the leg bag for the duration and grounded the cats.

And that’s why I gave up cheese in 2010.

Change Three (Giving up Typing….& Beer)

Have mentioned seven times in the past four years that I was the worst boxer in this galaxy.   This is an understatement.     When you like to hit people, you have two choices as an adult:  prison and boxing.

Never a fan of roommates, I picked up boxing as an alternative sport in my thirties and hired an ex Golden Gloves private coach to wail on me twice a week.    David kicked the crap out of me twice a week when we finished the forty-five minute skills session and then sparred three, three minute rounds in the ring.     David beat me senseless during those nine minutes and that hour workout twice a week was better than any training I have found since.    And it enhanced my bar fighting skills.

The heavy bags and the water bags mocked me when I walked into the gym.   All twenty-six of them smirked when I began wrapping m hands and I pictured them laughing out loud when I lined up to hit them.

Remember change one up above?   The arthritis?    When you combine poor boxing form and years of arthritic erosion in small joints, you get two wrists that look like this:

Given that most of us are not clinically trained in hand and wrist anatomy and physiology, here’s what my orthopedic surgeon said this past fall when he saw that X-Ray.   He dumbed it down for me.    He said this.   “Ummmm, all your bones on the bottom are in the wrong places.   We should fix that.  That looks like it might hurt.”  

And, it did.   My hands have hurt every minute of every day for the last two years with the last three months being the most painful.    The good pain, though…the kind that lets you know you’re alive and wakes you up in day long meetings.

Beer.

Beer has pulled me through.    Brett Favvvvvvvrre’s answer was pills.     Mine has been beer.

This morning, as you are reading this, my wonderfully skilled surgeon at Scripps Green is removing some of those messed up bones in one of the wrists, pulling the remaining bones together with K-wires, plates and screws and then using an iliac crest graft from my hip as the frosting on top of his four corner fusion on the left wrist.     He is going to do this:

Am going to pay one hundred dollars extra for two things:

1. To make the scar from the middle of the forearm to the middle of the left hand very pronounced.     If he does his job correctly, when I turn sixty, on my birthday, am going to have the cover of the Rolling Stones album “Sticky Fingers” tattooed on both arms with the scar as the zipper.
2. To surgically attach the item below so that I can be Wolverine forever.   And that’s pretty awesome.

Was unable to exercise for three months after the colon resection in 2010 and will be unable to lift from August, 2011 through March, 2012.   When you have to cut back on the exercise, you need to make significant dietary and drinking changes or risk a BMI north of twenty-five.    Which apparently will get you a handicapped placard and a free scooter from Medicare.   I do not want a fat person scooter or a handicapped placard.

Which is why, as of today, I am giving up beer.

Because while I sincerely look forward to having really cool scars on both arms by Thanksgiving, I am scared to death of getting fat.    Good bye beer, I will miss you.

Hello, wine!      I am doubling down on you this fall.   As Mr. Dickens so aptly wrote:  Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship and pass the rosy wine.   There are even boxes of wine!    Imagine that.    Wine in a box.    We have come a long, long way.

A few hundred folks visit here daily.  Thank you for visiting.   While I’ve been diligently practicing typing with these braces on for several months, am relatively certain the cast on the left arm and the brace on the right arm are going to preclude extraneous typing from August 15 through November 7 and then we’ll be switching it up to a cast on the right and a brace on the left from November 8 through February, 2012.   Also, the portion of my colon that chose to leave last summer sent a Telex back home from some tropical beach near Fiji seven weeks ago, inviting more of its breatheren to join it for scuba diving and fizzy umbrella drinks.  I will be re-visiting my RN friends at Scripps for another colon resection in September and have purchased a new pair of slippers for the colon resection vacation.   These slippers.

Dead sexy slippers.    We are going to have another party room at Scripps Green in September.

Given these limitations, this will be the last Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe posting until February 14, 2012.

Because Singles Awareness Day would not be complete without a celebration here at Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe.   Singles Awareness Day is more entertaining than Festivus.   Nothing in this world or any other world is better than the airing of the grievances.

Until February 14, 2012 feel free to peruse the three hundred or so postings here at your leisure or take advantage of the other four billion three hundred forty three thousand blogs available daily on Al Gore’s World Wide Web .   Wash your hands before you leave the restroom, change your sheets at least once a week, always call if you’re going to be late, and keep Ephesians 4:32 in mind as you roll through your respective days.   And, again, thanks for visiting.

Good bye.

And, as always…..good night, Bethany.

Post script……

Best Experienced With:          Michael Stanley Band;  Midwest Midnight

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this morning’s suggestion on what would have made last week’s Iowa Presidential “debate” better in a new browser window.    That’s a fine little guitar lick in the background beginning at 3:08.   Was my favorite as a kid.   Back when candidates actually debated.)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNwUsJAux78

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNwUsJAux78

There are no more extemporaneous Presidential debates.    Years ago, the candidates would come with a prepared opening statement, a prepared closing statement and then would actually answer the questions and opine in the middle.    For the past twenty years, we are subject to a series of prepared answers that seldom fit the actual questions asked.     An hour of nonstop non sequiturs, tailored for sound bites and spin doctors.   Reminiscent of Brick Tamland from the movie “Anchorman:  The Legend of Ron Burgundy”.

The following non sequiturs, spoken by either Mr. Cain or Mr. Pawlenty during the Iowa non sequitur hour last week, would have made the Iowa “debate” far more interesting.   Once they get the field narrowed down to four, it would also be more entertaining if those four candidates rolled up to the stage in the Banana Split mobile dressed as Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper, and Snork.    “Making up a mess of fun….loads of fun for everyone.”     Indeed.

Brown dress shoes can only be pulled off by 3.9% of the general population

Sed Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti una est divinitas, aequalis gloria, coaeterna maiestas. Qualis Pater, talis Filius, talis Spiritus Sanctus. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti

Miniature collies are fun to watch run because they are so proper.   This is how I would imagine Queen Elizabeth runs.

Watching Joe Cocker sing “Feeling Alright” is forty-three times more entertaining than watching golf, twenty-seven times more entertaining than waiting to re-enter the United States at the border crossing in Tijuana, twelve times more entertaining than reading US magazine and equally as entertaining as taking the “Maid of the Mist” under Niagara Falls.

Inductive fallacies of logic are entertaining and common in sound bites.    For example.  Premise 1:   Having just arrived in Ohio, I saw a white squirrel.   Conclusion: All Ohio Squirrels are white.    That is an inductive logical fallacy.   Most debate answers these days contain several examples of logic fallacies.

If you drive a convertible, and Styx’s song “Come Sail Away” comes on while you are driving on the highway, you should act out all the lyrics with your free hand.   If you are driving with the top down.    If the top is up, this will not be as effective or amusing.

The CERN Large Hadron Supercollider will allow the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson and may possibly cause a rip in the space time continuum.   This would release pirates back into France and Switzerland.  Pirates!

A duck’s quack will not echo

Three ounce bags of South Park’s Cheesy Poofs will soon be sold for $2.99 per bag at Wal Mart.

The first sign of the downfall of the Roman Empire was when the barbarian Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus in a bloodless coup.   The first sign of the downfall of the American Empire is the new show “Whisker Wars” on the Independent Film Channel and “Repo Games” on Spike TV.

There is a math proof that proves 2 can equal 1.   Here it is:

a = b
a2 = ab
a2 – b2 = ab – b2
(a – b)(a + b) = b(a – b)
a + b = b
2 = 1

Translated in Italian, Pinocchio means “pine head”

Governor Rick Perry chose not to participate in the Iowa Republican debate last week in Ames, Iowa.   Some postulate that he did not want to be within a country mile of wife trader-inner Newt Gingrich.   Others believe Governor Perry has something against Eastern Goldfinches and still another minority thinks he stayed away because the Iowa straw poll is utterly worthless in the grand scheme of things.  Iowa has only seven Electoral College votes and is, indeed, quite boring and flat.   Although Iowa does have the world’s largest popcorn ball (Sac City, Iowa) and the world’s largest rocking chair (West Amana, Iowa).

I believe Governor Perry chose to avoid Iowa because he is a true believer in my marketing theory….”The Xbox Scarcity Theory”.    Those of you who are still in the dating world might recognize this as the “People Want What They Cannot Have More Theory”.   This theory holds everywhere.  In business, in dating, and in politics.    People want more what they cannot have.

Can you remember a December holiday season when there was not a shortage of Xboxes?     Can you remember a December holiday season when you did not see parents beating each other with tire irons in Wal-Mart parking lots to get a more strategic place in line and not miss the opportunity in November to purchase an Xbox for little Sally or Billy’s Christmas or Chanukah?  And, when these white trash, no tap out fights happened, they would make the evening news programs and the periodicals.

Brilliant!

I read three newspapers papers a day whilst on my gym’s Precor in an effort to forget how painful the actual exercise is as a geriatric.     I read the USA Today as an appetizer (two minutes cover to cover), then the Los Angeles Times as a small main course (eighteen minutes cover to cover), and finish up with the New York Times as the main course (as long as it takes).  Weeks like this, when the market is an entertaining Sin wave, I will throw in the WSJ as dessert.   Today, all four papers had an article where they lumped together Mr. Santorum, Mr. Romney, Mr. Cain, Mr. Paul, Mr. Huntsman, Mr. Pawlenty, and Ms. Youcannotfollmeiknowyouarecrazy and discussed their Iowa strategy and how they fared in the debate.    Each paper also had a separate article dedicated solely to Mr. Perry and his conspicuous absence in Iowa this week.

Brilliant!

This will be the silliest Presidential race ever.     Game on.

Best Experienced With:          REM;        E Bow, The Letter

 

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s treatise in a new browser window.     “Will you show me something no one else has ever seen?”   Indeed.)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KMtMnVik4Q

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KMtMnVik4Q

 

 

 

 

Many believe that the most challenging Michael Stipe lyrics to sing are the “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”.  They are wrong.   The most challenging Michael Stipe lyrics to sing are “E Bow, The Letter”, because of the pauses.    Patti Smith’s cameo backing vocals are easy to sing and quite beautiful.    “I’ll take you over……there”.   Indeed.

This is the best book in the galaxy and quotes below are from the best book in the galaxy.     You are welcome.

 

“Illusions – The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
by Richard Bach – 1977

Perspective – Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.

Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.
You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it.    Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.    You are all learners, doers, and teachers.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

The simplest questions are the most profound.

Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.  Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect.

Then be sure of one thing:
The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.
The original sin is to limit the Is.      Don’t.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion….this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.

Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, “I’ve got responsibilities.”

The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that’s all it needs to be.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.

Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.
And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they’ll call you crazy.

Aluminum…tastes like fear.

Adrenalin…pulls us near.

Choose to sacrifice boredom.

Indeed.

Good nigtht.

 

 

Best Experienced With:      Belle Brigade;   Losers

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music in a new browser window.    You know who didn’t care about being smooth with women?   Keats.    And neutered cats.   In boxes)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkrC33xnw54

 

 

 

 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci   (Johnny Keats:  1795-1821)

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery’s song.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz’d and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes–
So kiss’d to sleep.

And there we slumber’d on the moss,
And there I dream’d, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry’d–“La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POP QUIZ:

Find Ceeeeeeatie, Deeeeeeeeeogie,, and Bruiser in this photo

You have four seconds

Do not be thrown by the lack of box

Trust your instincts

Go

 

 

Good night, Cassius……..

Best Experienced With:     The Replacements;     Here Comes a Regular

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s treatise.     Damn fine song.   Damn fine song for a damn fine poem)

 

 

 

 

A little Maya Angelou for those of you same sex couples who were able to celebrate your marriages legally in New York for the first time this past weekend.    What an excellent example of bipartisan support for love.  Well done Mark Grisanti, Stephen Saland, Roy McDonald, and James Alesi.   You voted your heart and not your party.   While this may cost you your position in a re-election, you’ll most certainly be able to spend the rest of the days of your respective living mornings…shaving, looking into the mirror, and passing the man in the mirror test with flying colors.   And you will be smiling.   As Dr. King said:  “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Amen.

This is “The Rock Cries Out to Us Today”.   Thank you, Maya Angelou.     (clapclapclapclapclapclap)

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers–
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot…
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours–your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes,
Into your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

“You’re like a picture on a fridge that’s never stocked with food.”    That’s a hell of a lyric and a hell of a good song.     God bless you, Paul Westerberg.    Good night, Bethany.

 

Best Experienced With:     The Rolling Stones;      Sympathy for the Devil

(This birthday missive is best experienced by right clicking on the link below to open the suggested background music in a new browser window)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je8MXiwmNIk

“The devil is not wise because he is the devil…the devil is wise because he is old.”    That’s a fantastic quote.   Have no idea who wrote it or said it, yet have plagiarized it for decades.    Today’s my birthday.   I love my birthday because it means there’s another 365 days of experience in the noggin and more tools in the tool kit.    Some hate getting older.   I roll around in getting older like a Bull Mastiff rolling around in a dead fish at dog beach in Del Mar.    Getting older is wonderful and fantastical.

The Random has blessed me with the most fantastic dating partners in this galaxy or any tangential galaxy.    All have made my birthdays special, have made me laugh like a hyena, and have borne the tremendous burden that is dating me with patience and grace.  Dating me is not easy.   Some days it is Dickensian, other days it’s Kafkaesque, and all days it’s like dating Hank Moody.  Two birthdays with two folks stand out in particular.   These are those two days.

The Skydiving Birthday:  Wilmington, Ohio

While living in Cincinnati, my girlfriend Diana bought me a day of sky diving for one birthday.  Not that sissy tandem skydiving, the real skydiving where you do a static line jump at 8:30 and then two more jumps on your own by sunset.   All three scared the living daylights out of me.

The static line, arguably the easiest because all you have to do is remember to blink and breathe for a full twenty minutes, was the hardest.  No one wants to be the guy who screws it up and dies on the easiest skydive.   That’s analogous to being the five year old who dies their first day on a tricycle by falling onto the sprinkler in an unfortunate spot while cruising at low speed through the front yard.    There’s nothing heroic or brave dying during the static line sky dive.  In fact, people would most likely make fun of you for the rest of their lives if you die during the static line jump.   Did you see the movie “Tropic Thunder”?   If you die during the static line sky dive, the odds are very, very, very good you will be nicknamed Simple Jack posthumously.

For those of you who have not experienced the static line jump, here is how it unfolds.   You get six, maybe seven minutes of training in a classroom on the proper way to arch when you jump off the strut of the wing, you get two or three minutes to practice this arch while jumping off of a picnic table, and then you get forty-seven minutes of “DO NOT DEPLOY YOUR CHUTE ACCIDENTALLY BY PULLING YOUR EMERGENCY CHUTE WHEN WE ARE ALOFT WITH A DOOR OPEN.”   That’s the hour training to jump off the wing of the plane.

That final forty-seven minutes is critical because if you happen to be the moron who deploys their chute accidentally while the door is open and you are aloft, people will die.  More on that in a bit.

Are you married?   Do you have kids?    Remember that abject terror you felt the morning of your marriage or right before your firstborn got borned?      If you combine both of those two and then raise them to the power of four, you will not exceed the terror you will get at 5,800 feet, stepping out onto the strut of a little bitty wing of a white trash prop plane in Wilmington, Ohio.     Trying to look out at the horizon, yet looking straight down and wondering how the hell you are going to remember everything they taught you in that first seven minutes about arching while gripping the strut of the wing of the plane.    You have already not accidentally deployed your reserve chute inside the plane and passed the moron test, yet here you are about to step off the door step, grab the wing strut, and hope to God you don’t sissy out when your legs are flapping in the wind.   That is an interesting eighty-four seconds.    Here is how it looks from inside the plane.   That would be you with your legs dangling, gripping the wing strut like your life depended on it.

Which it doesn’t.   You could trip off the step, miss the strut completely, and fall screaming yet your chute would still deploy because you are tethered to the plane.    A monkey could do it without training.    More likely a bonobo because of their higher IQ, yet a monkey nonetheless.   Which is why you’d be posthumously nicknamed Simple Jack if you died during a static line jump.    Static line jumps are the Velveeta cheese spread and Wonderbread sandwich of sky diving.

I don’t remember much of the second and third lessons of that skydiving birthday.    They may have taught some crucial lessons like “don’t start a land war in Southeast Asia” or “ matter cannot be created or destroyed” or even “heat flows from a source to a sink”.   Important lessons to be sure, but I don’t remember the classroom portion.    All I can clearly remember is that 11,500 feet looks seven zillion times higher than 5,500 feet when you are standing in the doorway of a plane about to jump out solo.   They put a little yellow helmet on your head because that little yellow helmet will surely save you from certain death if you screw up.   All helmets create the illusion of safety, much like safety glasses on manufacturing floors.

Here is how you jump when you are learning with two instructors and you are not strapped in tandem, like a sissy.   One instructor climbs out onto the roof of the plane and dangles.   The other hangs out the door, along the side of the plane.   You then have five seconds to get into the doorway, get into the proper position, and launch yourself out…hoping they grab a handful as you arch.   That five seconds feels longer than your sophomore year in high school and it is three times as awkward.

What’s the upside?     Terminal velocity.       You reach terminal velocity before you pull your chute ripcord at 4,500 feet and terminal velocity may be the finest feeling in the universe.   That floating crap when your chute pops out is not the best part of sky diving.     Terminal velocity is the best part of sky diving.  Terminal velocity may be the finest feeling in the universe. That was an amazing birthday day.

While driving home to Cincinnati on that July 13^th, I was addicted to sky diving and committed myself to return to Wilmington, Ohio every weekend for the next thirty-four to get jump certified.   This addiction commitment lasted exactly eight days until the next Sunday when the Cincinnati Enquirer had a front page article discussing how one of my jump masters had died the previous day when the person to whom he was tethered for a tandem (sissy) jump inadvertently pulled the reserve chute while aloft with the door open…causing both of them (tethered together) to get ripped out of the plane.   Which would not have been too bad, had that reserve chute not gone straight back and gotten wrapped around the tail of the plane, causing them to drag behind the plane until the reserve chute ripped in half, causing them to plummet to the ground from 7,000 feet……….

………thus ending my desire to get jump qualified in thirty-four weeks.  Clearly the woman (newbie) half of that tandem combo was not carefully listening when they did the forty-seven minutes on not “DEPLOYING YOUR CHUTE ACCIDENTALLY BY PULLING YOUR EMERGENCY CHUTE WHEN WE ARE ALOFT WITH A DOOR OPEN.”   She lived.   Don’t know if she went sky diving again.      If she did, that would be a cool story to tell the other skydiving students on the way up to altitude in the plane, though.     “Sure hope it goes better than last month when I killed the instructor and plummeted 7,000 feet to land in a big bunch of bushes, my fall cushioned by the dead instructor.   Is this your first time?  It’s my second time.”

The Bullrunning Birthday:  Pamplona, Spain

My favorite birthday adventure to date was the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, (otherwise known as the festival of San Fermin) with Kelley.

Kelley and I flew to Spain the week before my somethingith birthday.   We flew in business all the way to Spain, arriving in a stupor for our eleven hour layover in Barcelona.     For years, I have blamed this stupor for the worst meal I have ever eaten…..griddle fish.      Griddle fish, you might think, is a fish because the word “fish” is in the phrase “griddle fish”.   A fish cooked on a griddle perhaps?   Griddle fish is by no means a fish cooked on a griddle.     Griddle fish is a jellyfish with no tentacles, cooked to a rubbery texture and an inedible flavor.

If you are wearing flip flops or have a bathmat near your computer, take off one of your flip flops or lift the bath mat.   Put that flip flop or bath mat in your mouth and chew or suck on it for half a minute or so.   You have now tasted griddle fish.   Like it?

There’s a ying and yang to all of life and the yang to the griddle fish’s ying was the Museo de Picasso in Barcelona.    Famished, yet still stupored, Kelley and I made the most of our day in Barcelona by crossing the street and spending four hours looking at Picasso’s masterpieces.  If you truly want to experience Picasso’s Las Meninas, etc, show up at the Picasso Museum famished. jet lagged and stupored.     You are welcome.

Our eleven hour Barcelona layover complete, Kelley and I took off for Pamplona, cocktails in hand.

Kelley and I showed up blind in Pamplona, not knowing that there is a mandatory eighty-seven drink per day minimum.   All eighty-seven drinks must be red wine.    Walking from our hotel to town center at least forty-three people stopped us us and made us drink deeply from their wine skins.  Because Kelly was ridiculously beautiful.   I always outkick my coverage.

Here’s how it unfolds at the running of the bulls.   July 6^th is always the kickoff party:  think of it as the Fat Tuesday of Mardi Gras.    Seven trillion Europeans and three hundred seventy Restofworldeans running around in white shirts and pants, accented by red bandanas, drinking red wine so that if you spill, it looks like it is part of the outfit.    Everyone gathers around a big statue in the middle of town to drink red wine.   If you are a moron, you climb the statue in Pamplona’s town square and jump off like this:

The real fun always starts on July 7.   Get it?   7/7.     Clever.

The running of the bulls starts on 7/7 at 8 a.m. and you can start lining up at 7:00 a.m.   7,7,7.    See the motif?    Makes it easy for the ridiculously intoxicated seven trillion three hundred seventy Worldeans to remember when to get there, when to warm up and stretch, etc.     8:00 a.m on 7/7 is when you run.

Kelley and I fell asleep at 6:03 a.m., woke up at the crack of 7:42 a.m. and sprinted towards where we saw them setting up the course the previous day.     Late and, again, somewhat stupored because of the eighty seven drink per day minimum, I climbed over a six foot barricade and saw this.   I took this photo.   I do not remember taking this photo.    Not at all.

Then, I ran.

I am a poor runner.   I can sprint with a world class runner for six or even seven feet at a very fast clip but when the course is longer than seven feet, I am a very poor runner.   The thousands of Spanish and other folks lining the streets (safely behind the bull barricades) saw this and immediately took up my cause.  They shouted “run, Forrest run” which, in Spanish, is” corrias, Forrest, corrias”.   This touched my heart and, without getting gored and running over only three gentlemen from Minnesota a la Terry Tate (office linebacker) and ninety-seven French people (just for sport), I made it into the arena before the last bull arrived.   Kelleeeeeeeeeey took that picture below from the stands and you can find me if you loook really hard.     Am wearing all white.     White, with a  a red bandana.      Go.

(HINT:  See the bulls?    See the only guy with his back to the two bulls?    Only had an hour of sleep)

Mentioned earlier that Kelly and I arrived in Pamplona blind.   Had no idea there was a bullfighting arena at the end of the run.   Moreover, had no idea what happened inside the arena or that they closed the big wooden doors once the last bull out of fifteen total arrived after the mile(ish) run.    Was tired because I am not a very good runner and saw a group of fifty or so folks sitting in front of a gate at the other side of the bullfighting arena while the rest of the folks meandered about, drinking red wine from wine skins.   Figured those fifty guys were somewhat stupored like me and joined them.

These fifty gentlemen taught me a song.    This song.  “A San Fermín pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro dándonos su bendición.”   You pregnantly pause right there and follow it up with “Viva San Fermín !, Gora San Fermín !”    The fifty of us said the last part with emphasis and, as we finished, the gate opened and a very large bull ran out, knocking down the two gentlemen behind me and to the left.   That bull literally jumped over our row and destroyed those two men.    Then everyone chased around that bull and hit it with newspapers and such.   When the song ends and the bull comes out, it looks like the photo below.   Not from below, though.   From below it looks far more interesting because you are sitting with your fifty friends looking up at the bull from a completely different perspective.   The bull looks much larger from below.

Remember earlier when I said terminal velocity may be the finest feeling in the universe?   Terminal velocity pales in comparison to sitting in front of that gate with my fifty new friends, singing “A San Fermín pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro dándonos su bendición.”, and waiting to see which way the bulls are going to jump when they open the gate.    The purpose of the eighty-seven drink minimum now clear, I sat there with my new friends for the next thirty minutes as they released bulls into the arena, then joined all my arena friends chasing the bulls around, hitting them with newspapers and such.    The run itself is eclipsed by the fun in the arena.

Kelley and I found each other when the arena shut down for the morning and made our way back to the hotel.   In the elevator I mentioned that the morning was my favorite morning ever and it was a shame that they only do it one day a year, to which the gentleman alongside us replied: “they do it seven days in a row, moron.”

Get it?   Starts on 7/7 and you get to do it every morning for 7 days.    Which I did, making that birthday week the finest damn birthday week ever in the history of birthday weeks in this galaxy or any other galaxy.

The 2011 Singersongwriterworkshop Birthday:  Yosemite (foiled)

This year’s birthday would have topped the running of the bulls.    Three months ago I signed up for singer songwriter workshop in Yosemite taught by Tim Bluhm of the Mother Hips and Steve Poltz of himself (solo) and The Rugburns.     Five days camping in Yosemite with only eleven other aspirating singer songwriters, learning the craft and playing music.

I am a poor guitar player and an even worse singer.  Just started playing the guitar twenty months ago and when I sing, it sounds like that sound you get when you throw a dozen rabid cats in a burlap sack and smash them into a wall while Freddy Kruger drags his blade gloves over a chalkboard over and over and over again.  Nonetheless, I eagerly signed up and was very much looking forward to July 13-17 in Yosemite.   For three primary reasons.

First, Steve Poltz is my favorite singer songwriter in the universe.    Mr. Poltz is witty, ridiculously brilliant, and magnificently talented.    Have brought friends to Rugburns and Steve Poltz concerts for fifteen years and 100% of them have left saying “holy cow that was ridiculously good.”    The first song I learned to play on the guitar over three painful (for my neighbors when I had the windows open) was Steve Poltz’s “Everything About You”, perhaps the best love song ever written.

Second, I have always wanted to learn how camp.   It looks easy; however, it may be like surfing where it looks easy, yet turns out to be challenging.    Learning to camp would have also added another tool to my tool kit and this tool will come in mighty handy when we hit the new Rapture deadline.   If I am left behind after The Rapture, am going to need camping skills.   And weapons.   Lots and lots of weapons.

Third, there are twenty-three half way finished songs here at the desk and the five days in Yosemite would have given me plenty of time to finish all twenty-three songs.   Or at least nineteen of the songs so I can record an album and a follow up EP.   Here’s a list of some of the songs.   These are real songs that I have written over the past twenty months because if you cannot get your little monkey fingers to play all the chords that real musicians put into their songs, write your own songs with only the chords your little monkey fingers can play without fretting too much.  Here are several of the unfinished songs:

“My Hot Girlfriend Has Hyperkyphosis and Prosopagnosia”

“This Song has Thirty-Seven Verses & No Chorus”

“You & Your Troll Ugly Friends”

“Neck Tattoo”

“If Don Quixote Had a Shotgun”

“Dilettantes and Sycophants”

“I Know Calculus, But I Still Can’t Figure You”

“Codependent Elephants”

“Saks and Violins”

Mother Nature and The Random conspired against me on this year’s birthday when this email arrived late last week:

Gentleman-

 

I have a little piece of bad news about your trip. I spoke to the horse-packer today and he told me he thinks he will not be able to run stock into any of the lakes until end of July this year. There is over 200% of normal snow-pack for this time of year in Yosemite area, a record by far! We have been following the conditions closely and thought we were going to be ok for next week, but it looks like we are getting beaten down by mother nature again. 

 

Your trip isn’t the only one affected next week and we are very sorry to have to alert you to this so close to your departure. The melting pattern of the snow pack is unusually slow on top of the record depth.This trip is so special to everyone involved: you the guests, the guides, and the musicians so I feel awful having to cancel. 

 

However at this point, even if we can could somehow get up there the lakes are still frozen over,  the ground will be wet at best, the bugs will be bad, and the trails will still be covered in snow.  We sincerely apologize for the expense in flights and schedule changes that may occur. To that end for the Texas friends, Steve said he’s going to make it up to you guys with something special.

 

Let me know if you want me to send you a refund or move your trip fare onto next year’s trip.

 

Again, I feel awful that we have to cancel.

 

Best, Ian

—
Ian Elman
President
Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides
Chosen “Best Outfitter on Earth”
by National Geographic Adventure Magazine Nov/2007
and “Best Adventure Travel Company” Jan/2009

The 2011 Replacement Birthday

In love, life, and business you should always have a Plan B.    I have a gazillion miles on Delta Airlines because for work I fly them every hour, on the hour.   If Delta owns a plane, odds are I have touched it over the past twenty years.    If you are on a Delta plane, odds are you will see my name scrawled in black Sharpie marker in one of the lavatories.   Next time you fly, check the wall when you wash your hands.   Always wash your hands before leaving the lavatory.    Plan B involved using some of these gazillion miles to go to a new country.    Have been to forty-three countries and the goal is one hundred ninety-six countries before October 21, 2011.

Because of The Rapture.   Have to use up all your miles before the end of days.   Or give them to Harold Camping’s church so he can fly to Tijuana and visit The Bambi Club.

Plan B for this year’s birthday was was Juba, South Sudan.    Last Saturday, South Sudan became the world’s one hundred ninety sixth country after fifty years of conflict and a vote in January where over ninety six percent of the residents voted to create their own sovereign nation.     Who better to celebrate your birthday with?    I imagined flying into Juba on the 14^th, getting off the plane, heading downtown and drinking the native White Bull beer with other birthday celebrators until I headed home the next day.   No hotel, no bags…just twenty-four glorious hours with my fellow birthday revelers.    Delta does not fly to Juba.     Foiled.

Plan C was to fly to Tunisia, get someone to drive me to the Libya border, and get a photo flipping off the general direction of where Muammar Gaddafi would be.   That was going to be my 2012 holiday card.     Delta could get me into Tunisia on the 13^th, but not our again until February, 2016 (or some other silly future date).  Foiled yet again.

Plan D was to fly into Burkina Faso and spend a day taking photos in front of banks in the capital city.   Look at your spam folder in your email accounts.   Read the emails from all the folks in Burkina Faso who have fourteen million dollars here in the United States and need your bank account number to get the money out…after which you will get five million dollars.   And a pony!    That would have been an awesome photo collage for my 2012 holiday card:  me in front of four Burkina Faso banks with a fist full of dollar bills and Burkinian Fasosian wampum.     Would have been 327,000 miles to fly business class to Burkina Faso on Delta.    You can get to Saturn and back for 327,000 miles on other airlines.  Hat trick of foliation.

Plan E (Ivory Coast), Plan F (Bogata, Columbia), and Plan G (Pointe Noire, Congo) were mostly also 327,000 miles and subsequently discarded as back up plans over the past two days.    Why?   Because clearly The Random wants me to finish all twenty-three songs and I could not have done so whilst sipping a Bloody Mary in the business class section of a Delta plane headed to Africa.    When The Random speaks, we should all listen.     And I always, always wash my hands before leaving the lavatory.   As should you.

The photo above is the new plan for this year’s birthday adventure and it is a damn fine plan.   Plan your work and work your plan.

Eat your heart out, Tolstoy.    I now own you.

Thanks for visiting this evening.

And happy birthday to me…

Good night, Bethany.   Mind the raptors, my dear…..

Best Experienced With:    Noah and the Whale;    L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this morning’s examination of how to not handle poor customer experiences)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbGUEelmzxo

 

Below is the letter I sent to Delta Airlines this morning in response to their form email asking for feedback on my “delayed” flight from Memphis to Minneapolis on June 23, 2011.

Dear Daniel C,We are very sorry that your flight was delayed on June 23, 2011. Your feedback on this experience is important to us. We ask that you please provide feedback on your experience using the survey at the link below. The survey is between 4 and 12 questions, targeting your specific circumstances, and should only take a couple of minutes to complete. We thank you in advance for your feedback and again offer our deepest apologies for this inconvenience.

Dear Delta:

You just sent me another survey saying:  “We are very sorry that your flight was delayed on June 23, 2011. Your feedback on this experience is important to us”.  Thanks for asking how my flight 2275 from Memphis to Minnesota went last week!    Saying my flight was simply “delayed” is like saying the Cleveland Cavaliers “didn’t have a great season” last year.    Both descriptors vastly understate the awfulness that was last year’s Cleveland hoop team or my extra time spent in Minneapolis last Thursday.

“Delayed” would mean I got home Thursday night as planned and did not have to reschedule and miss several Friday meetings.  My trip back to San Diego was “really, really, really, really really, super delayed” because instead of walking into my house at 7:45 p.m. Thursday evening, I walked into my house at 3:45 p.m. on Friday afternoon.    To put this in perspective, that’s the expected life of a Mayfly.

In a perfect world, my flight would have gone like this:

Flight:	Delta 2275
Departs:	1:50 pm from Memphis, Tennessee
Arrives:	3:56 pm at Minneapolis – St Paul, Minnesota
Seats:	03C
Meals:	Refreshments
Gate:	See Airport Monitors

Flight:	Delta 1787
Departs:	5:05 pm from Minneapolis – St Paul, Minnesota
Arrives:	6:52 pm at San Diego, California
Meals:	View menu options
Gate:	See Airport Monitors

Instead, it went precisely like this:

11:30 a.m.:  I arrive at Memphis airport and check my bag.   I always check my bag because you have these wonderful, large baggage storage areas under the place where I sit every day.   Furthermore, I believe in a fast boarding process and those with carryon luggage tend to slow down the throughput.    Finally, I check a bag because I am often gone for four or five nights and I bring along several suits.   I have a lot of suits and enjoy wearing all of them, wrinkle free.   Those tiny carryon bags will mess your suit up if you wear a size 50 suit.   FYI.

12:40 p.m.:    Flight shows that it will now leave Memphis at 2:25 p.m. instead of 1:50

12:42 p.m.:    Noticing there are several flights from Memphis to Detroit, Salt Lake City, and Cincinnati available, I ask the gate agent if she really believes we will leave at 2:25.   My connect was one hour with the 1:50 departure.    Gate agent assures me I will have plenty of time to connect in Minneapolis.    I ask what the load looks like on the 9:55 p.m. from Minneapolis to SAN and she says “over sold”.     I ask again if, since we have other opportunities to get me home, perhaps we should reroute me.   Also explained that I would willingly give up my upgrade and sit in a middle seat on a rerouted flight because I had been travelling all week, each week, for the previous month and very much wanted to get home Thursday night.    She assures me that we will be fully boarded and taxiing at 2:26.

Looking at the group in the boarding lobby, I pointed out the group of fifty or so high schoolers and bet her twenty dollars that we would not be boarded until 2:45 and there was no way I would make my 5:05.   Once again I requested to go a different route home.   She said that she could not put me on a different flight because the Memphis to Minneapolis one still showed that I could make my connection.

2:10 p.m.:  We begin boarding

2:45 p.m.:  We finish boarding (kids slowed us down significantly)

2:55 p.m.:  We take off

4:52 p.m.:  We land

5:03 p.m.:  I walk off plane to see that I have missed my 5:05 p.m. flight home.

5:10 p.m.:  I head to Sky Club and discuss my options with a very nice woman working the front desk there.    She explains that there is no way I will get on the 9:55 p.m. flight home and that she will put me on standby for both the 9:20 a.m. and 11:18 a.m. on Friday.   Further, she calls immediately and puts a note in the record to pull my bag.   She suggests I wait for an hour and then go pick up my bag.   She also gives me a bag of toiletries in the event anything goes awry.     As I leave she assures me that since my flight landed only ten minutes ago, Delta would be able to get my bag to me on baggage carousel six.

6:20 p.m.    My bag is not on baggage carrousel six or anywhere near the baggage area. After a twenty minute wait in line at baggage services near baggage carrousel six, I get to the front of the line.   Below is the exchange:

Me:  “Hello, the woman up at the Sky Club requested my bag get pulled because do to your flight being late from ATL to MEM, I missed my 5:05 flight from MIN to SAN.”

Her:  “Your bag is not down here”

Me:  “That is very clear to me.   Were my bag here, I’d be in a taxi heading to a hotel instead of having this wonderful conversation with you.   I waited in line specifically to ask you if perhaps you could find where my bag is and when it might get to here.”

Her:  (sighs) “I guess I can call someone”.   Calls.   Talks for a bit.   Asks what the other person’s last name is, then asks how the other person’s mother is.   They have a nice conversation for a few minutes while I wait.   None of the conversation has anything remotely to do with the two of them solving my bag challenge.

Her: “They say they it will probably be here in 20 minutes, so you should wait 20 minutes”

Me:  “Wait 20 minutes and then get back in the 15 minute line…or wait 5 minutes and then get in the 15 minute line…or stay right here in front of you for the next 20 minutes?   Can you please be more precise?”

Her:   “Well, I’m getting off work right now so you will have to wait in line again”

Me:  “What are the odds they are going to get my bag to me?”

Her:  “What do you mean?  I can’t tell you if they can find your bag”

Me:  “In other word, if you have 100 people in this exact same situation, of that 100 people, how many folks would actually have a bag show up here at baggage carosell six?”

Her:  “Ten”

Me:  “OK, so in the future, if you get that same question, the answer is ‘the odds are 10% that you will get your bag.’   Or, you could say ‘one in ten’”   Both would be an accurate answer to my question ‘what are the odds’.   Does that make sense to you?”

Her:  “Sir, I have to leave”

Me:  “Not yet.    May I please have the name and number of the person you called so that I can call them after you leave and see if they found my bag?   Otherwise, I will just get in a cab right now and leave.”

Her:  “Sir, you can give me your number and I will call them.   I cannot give you that number.”

Me:  “But you’re leaving”

Her:  “Someone else will call and then call you.”

Me:  “Here’s my card.   Now, please walk me through the process and how it is going to unfold.    Who will be calling who in how many minutes and then when will they call my cell?   Please bring that person to me so that I can meet them and get verification that they are going to call me when you leave.    Want to make sure we are all on the same page.

Her: “Let me get my supervisor”

She goes and gets her supervisor.     I once again explain what the woman in the Sky Club told me to do and ask if perhaps I can leave, go to a hotel, and they can bring me my bag so that I do not have to sit in the airport any longer.

Supervisor:  “We only deliver bags that we lose to homes or hotels.”

Me:  “Well, clearly you have lost my bag”

Supervisor:  “Sir, your bag is not lost.”

Me:  “Oh, good!   Well, please tell me precisely where it is, I will go get it and then I can change out of this suit when I get to the hotel.   I’ve been in this suit for twelve hours and would like to throw on some shorts.   This is great news.   My bag is not lost!”

Supervisor:  “Sir, you know that is not what I meant.    I will personally call you in twenty minutes and see what we can do.”

Me:  “Well, it’s been twenty minutes already, so how about you call right now?”

Supervisor:  “Please go wait over there, there is a line behind you.”

Me:  “You’re going to call that person and then call me in twenty minutes?

Supervisor:  “Yes, Mr. Mulligan”

Me:  “Thank you”

7:20 p.m.    Supervisor and first woman to whom I spoke disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

At 7:30 p.m., realizing my bag was never showing up, I left and found a cab.  Had the cab take me to a Walgreen’s where I bought a blue three dollar tee shirt, a brush and some hair product.   I did not buy toothpaste because I thought there would be toothpaste in the little bag that your folks gave me.    Then, at 11:00 p.m., I was standing there in my blue Walgreen’s tee shirt looking at the toothpasteless bag of toiletries wondering why the heck Delta would enclose a small plastic bag of clothes detergent, yet no toothpaste.

If you miss a flight, you have between eight and ten hours to sleep and such before heading back to the airport.    How can you possibly hand wash and dry something in a hotel sink in that time period?   Is there some sort of quick dry material that I am unaware of?  If so, please email me a link to this material because I will wear a suit, socks, shirt, and underwear of that quick dry material the next time I fly and avail myself of your small plastic bag of laundry detergent when you get me stuck somewhere again.

Back to the toothpaste.   Or lack thereof.    If you recall, I was standing at the sink in my blue Walgreen’s three dollar tee shirt looking down at my dry Delta toothbrush.    In case you want the full visual there is a script “Minnesota!” on the front, underlined across the entire word.   My suit and blue dress shirt were in the bathroom where I had steamed them somewhat to remove the travel scents.     Thus, they were somewhat moist.   I threw the suit and shirts back on, put on my dress shoes and walked down to the front desk of the hotel to get some toothpaste.

Given that I have flown over 100,000 miles on Delta virtually every year for the past eighteen, figured you would want to get a very precise answer to your question “how did we take care of you when we made you miss your connection in Minneapolis and then could not get you on the next flight that evening”?    None of multiple choice answers on the emailed survey truly captured the twenty wasted hours of my life.

Most of us that have challenges flying each week forget about them when we get back home.    It’s like childbirth, I would imagine, although I never procreated.   My sisters all have children, though, as do most of my friends.

You should fire the genius who thought it was a good idea to send an email two days later reminding us of the awful experience we had.    The only reason I am sending you this is an email popped into my box asking “how did we do”.    How about you take me off of that “how did we do” email push when you mess up my travel?   I’d rather forget about it and think about next week’s adventures.   Attached to this letter you will find the other twenty-six surveys I have received since January 1, 2011 asking me to explain how my experience was after a “delayed” flight.     That’s one per week, on average.

Finally, through June 24^th this year, you have gotten me home late half of the weeks I have flown.   Half.    While that type of batting average might get you into Cooperstown, it’s not a strong average for getting me home after a long week.    That’s how my experience was.

How was your week?

Best Regards,

Dan Mulligan

Diamond Medallion by August, 2011 (at 113,000 miles for 2011 through today)

Million Miler

PS:  That gate agent in Memphis owes me twenty bucks

Best Experienced With:          Deer Tick;     Art Isn’t Real

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background song to this evening’s treatise.     Stand on your desk and sing loudly and proudly “I know of a city of sin……and that’s the place I want to meet you in”.  Indeed.   That’s another damn fine song.)

Mr. Walt Whitman never just went through the motions…….

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up–for you the flag is flung–for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths–for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

 

Respectfully Yours,

 

 

The Dotted Line

Good night

I miss you, too

.

Best Experienced With:          Olin & The Moon;   Terrible Town

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s examination of dino Jesus and maff.   And if you live in So Cal, go see Olin live some time.    And if you live elsewhere, go to iTunes and download their music and then buy me a beer sometime.   You are welcome.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqXKkpHOvgA

We hate being quiet, we’d rather be loud.      Amen.

 

I’m going to go with……forty-two.    Yep……42.      It’s always forty-two.

With a hat trick in Pulitzer Prizes…….Mr. Carl Sandburg, with more maff.

Arithmetic:    Carl Sandburg; 1878-1967

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven — or five
six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky — or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply — and you carry the
multiplication table in your head and hope you won’t lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

And they can all go to hell.     That’s a good tune.

You are welcome.   Thanks for joining this evening for Raptor Jesus Night.      Come back soon.

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:          Dire Straits;         Romeo and Juliet

( Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s treatise in a new browser window.   An open letter to a good friend’s question on a successful marriage, set to one of the finest love songs ever.  The eternal question….. “You and me babe, how about it? ”    Indeed.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OaTaEX8Kh8

Some folks choose to surround themselves with attractive people as bait fish and others surround themselves with troll-like looking people to make their beauty shine through.    Some choose to surround themselves with sycophants in an attempt to avoid intelligent debate and still others surround themselves with contrarians to keep the conversation lively.   I choose to surround myself with ridiculously smart people because ridiculously people have the best stories.   Smart people are also a free source for “word of the day”.

Had the good fortune to meet one of these ridiculously smart folks years ago at a job that we will blind here as Acme Anvil Company…the only place Wiley-E-Coyote will purchase anvils.    This gentleman, further blinded with his pseudonym Oliver Kloseov, and I often worked late at the Acme Anvil Company Dallas office and we had tended to have very robust conversations about business and relationships.   I recall one late evening when he asked “are all women crazy” and I replied (very misogynistically) “yes they are…however if you look at it as a graph of craziness versus your love of them, you can determine the line of diminishing returns and make the correct decisions based upon the data”.     Older and wiser these days, I would like to recant that answer and modify it.    All 6.7B of us are crazy and the same graph holds true for men and women.

Oliver K, seriously overqualified and underappreciated in his position at Acme Anvil Company left there and got a full ride to Penn’s Wharton School.  He has since carved out a fantastic space for himself in this world.   A space I watch with great interest and zero creepiness through Facebook each month because when I write, several faces always come to mind.  One of the faces always present is Mr. Oliver Kloseov.  If I can make him think and if I can make him laugh, then I have most certainly nailed down the far, far, far right tail on a Gaussian distribution.   That tail is the true target audience for Mind of Mully (classic) and Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe.

Read a Facebook message from Oliver K last week which, among other things, asked; “What are the most important things you think for success in a marriage? We got the disagree, talk, and hug part down…”    Clearly, they have seventy percent of the secret to a successful marriage nailed down with the “disagree, talk, hug it out” offense.      The open letter to Oliver Kloseov below is one man’s opinion on the remaining thirty percent.    A man who choose to remain blissfully single until thirty-eight, and remains blissfully single again.   A man who lives with five cats.

A man whose best friends from college, three sisters, and mom/dad remain happily married decades after saying “I do”.  I am the Joe Buck of marriage…a student and rabid fan of the game, yet a non-player of the game.    While this letter is for Oliver K and his beloved, the rest of you are welcome to read along.   Later on there will be a bonfire, marshmallows and a sing-along to Olivia Newton John.    Let’s begin.

Dear Oliver Kloseov,

You found someone to hang with forever and ever and ever!     Fantastic!    That leaves just one of us to continue the offense of hanging out in random psychologist offices, looking for our personal version of Natalie Portman’s Samantha character from the movie Garden State.   You have my word that I will remain holding the torch in that quest and will continue the pursuit in perpetuity.    It is a quest I intend to pursue with great vigor and intensity.

Very much looking forward to seeing you again and meeting your betrothed on August 27^th.    It’s been far too long since we have laughed like hyenas together.    Pescadero, California looks like a most excellent location for a wedding!    I am going to bring a guitar along on the train ride, mostly to busker for tips along the way, but also so that on one of the evenings we can croon together at Duarte’s there on the main drag in Pescadero.    We are going to sing the song you cued up there above for your fiancé/wife (depends upon which day we take over Duarte’s and sing this lovely song to her).

Pescadero!   Mostly white painted buildings, dating back to the wreck of the ship Carrier Pigeon in 1853 when the Pescadero townsfolk recovered white paint from the Carrier Pigeon wreck and put the shite paint to good use.    Forty-one years after the Carrier Pigeon shipwreck, in 1894, Duarte’s was founded when Frank Duarte bought a barrel of whiskey over in Santa Cruz and dragged it on back to Pescadero and sold glasses of whiskey for a dime.    Am certain that all 643 permanent Pescadero residents, as well as everyone joining you two for your nuptials will truly enjoy drinking more pricey whiskey at Duarte’s when we sign this song to your beautiful fiancé/wife (depends upon which day we take over Duarte’s and sing this lovely song to her).

In the event I am unable to learn to play a B chord by the end of August, we also might sing her Use Somebody by Kings of Leon.   Let’s play it by ear and you choose when we get to Duarte’s?

It has, indeed, been far too long and despite the years and the distance, I remain tickled pink that we have stayed in touch.    Mostly because you are the type of person who would ask a friend to opine on “what are the most important things you think for success in a marriage?”   Before weddings, most folks are all wrapped up in seating arrangements and center piece selection.    You are reaching out to friends and asking their opinion on the keys to a successful marriage.  (clapclapclapclapclap)

The answer to “what are the most important things you think for success in a marriage?” is as follows.

Everything you need to know about being a great partner in a marriage, all the things critical to success in a marriage can be garnered by carefully examining roles and characters played by Brad Pitt.    Brad Pitt characters and, of course……… Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi .

Avoid acting like any of these Brad Pitt characters while married:

• Louis de Point du Lac from Interview with a Vampire
• Jeffrey Goines from Twelve Monkeys
• Chad Feldheimer from Burn After Reading
• The preppy guy in Less Than Zero
• Early Grayce from Kalifornia
• Floyd from True Romance
• Patch Boomhauer from that episode of King of the Hill
• Heinrich Harrer from Seven Years in Tibet

As often as possible, act like any of these brad Pitt characters while married:

• Tristan from Legends of the Fall
• Joe Black from Meet Joe Black
• Achilles from Troy
• Benjamin Button in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Aldo Raine from Inglourious Basterds
• Floyd from True Romance
• Rusty Ryan from Ocean’s Eleven
• Rusty Ryan from Ocean’s Twelve
• Rusty Ryan from Ocean’s Thirteen
• Rusty Ryan….in general

See?    Everything you need to know about being a great partner in a marriage, all the things critical to success in a marriage can be garnered by carefully examining Brad Pitt characters.   Yes, the Floyd character was supposed to be on both lists.  Mostly because Floyd is my favorite Brad Pitt character of all time.  Joe Black may seem like he would fit into the first grouping, being Death and all; however, Joe had a deep fascination with understanding love and asked wonderful “love” questions throughout Meet Joe Black    When Joe Black asked Quince how he knew Alison loved him, Quince replied; “Because she knows the worst thing about me and it’s okay.”     That is one hell of a great answer.

Brad Pitt theorem is proved and closed.  And what of Rudyard Kipling and Rikki Tikki Tavi?     You could substitute “ great husband” or “ great wife” for “man my son” at the end of Mr. Kipling’s most famous poem, If.    That’s one hell of a great poem, explaining a solid offense for a successful marriage.    It’s not Rikki Tikki Tavi, but it is one hell of a great poem.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

While “If” is a fine Rudyard Kipling work and does define the things necessary for a successful marriage, the best Kipling example of successful marriage can be found byclosely examining the mongoose Rikki Tikki in Rikki Tikki Tavi.   Refresher.    Rikki Tikki was washed out of his house by a flood, ended up close to death near a family ’s home in India.    Man and boy (Teddy) find Rikki, nurse him back to health, and adopt Rikki Tikki.  Rikki kills one cobra (Nag) and makes that cobra’s wife (Nagaina) and enemy for life.

If you cue up the You Tube video below when you finish reading your letter, fast forward it to precisely 3:36 into the video and watch it until 6:03.    The boy sitting at the table at the beginning?   That’s your relationship/marriage.     Rikki Tikki is you.  Nagaina is anything that gets in the way of you two having a ridiculously successful marriage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoKslUkDkE

As you two roll through the next four or five decades as a married couple, please mentally picture that mongoose jumping up and down, making that chirping sound, and fluffing out his tail to make it look bigger and then attacking whenever anyone or anything gets in the way of your marriage.    Nagaina might come in the form of your pride, your job, old friends who don’t fit into your new chosen path….there are many Nagainas.    Kill them quickly.    And if you leap straight into the air and make that chirping sound, that will add to the entertainment value.   Exponentially.

Brad Pitt, Rikki Tikki, and, as I texted you last week, Nekked Saturdays.   Because all the good things contained in this letter can be undone in a heartbeat if you fail to make the time for Nekked Saturdays every month for the next three thousand months.      Keep that in mind.   See you at the end of August.

All my best,

 

 

Mully

Stuck around for the bonfire, marshmallows, and sing-along, did you?    Grab a carpet square and find a pointy stick.    The sing-along will be to Olivia Newton John’s “I Honestly Love You”.    For twenty-five years, I have waited to see someone up on the altar grab the microphone from the pastor or officiator at a wedding and start belting out this tune.    I may get married for a weekend just to cross that off my list.

Olivia Newton John’s “I Honestly Love You”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqcVhOz-vNY

Hey look….someone brought a doggy.     Someone get the doggy a marshmallow…brown it nicely.