Birthdays, Anniversaries, Sesquicentennials, Bad Songs

Hello everyone!

Today is a day of happy birthdays and happy anniversaries:

• Happy 200th birthday to Charles Darwin.
• Happy 200th birthday to Abraham Lincoln.
• Happy 100th birthday to the NAACP.

That's a pretty impressive list, and the birthdays are nice, neat round numbers. Of course, the numbers are based on Earth making complete revolutions around the sun. That means that if Earth moved slightly slower or faster, we wouldn't be discussing this now. Also, these birthdays are based on multiples of a number system that itself is based on the amount of fingers people have, so if humans had eight fingers instead of ten and we used an octal system instead of a decimal system, we also wouldn't be talking about these two people and this organization today. Sure, a cynic like me might point out how arbitrary these milestones actually are. But that's no fun, so YAY! Happy birthdays!

Also, happy 150th birthday (a couple days early) to Oregon. Saturday will mark Oregon's Sesquicentennial. When I lived in Michigan in 1987, they had this big statewide sesquicentennial celebration that included a stupid commercial in which idiots in shopping malls would try to pronounce the word "sesquicentennial," inevitably screwing it up and sounding like complete morons. What a way to promote your state, eh? "Come to Michigan and socialize with illiterate people at the mall!" I think that would've made a great slogan.

Instead, they went with, "Say Yes to Michigan!" This was also during Nancy Reagan's asinine "Just Say No" program, so as a 12-year-old I was quite confused. My confusion never went away as I got older.

Anyway, the new slogan also led to another round of commercials, this time with images of beautiful Michigan scenery juxtaposed with a horribly corny song apparently sung by the choir from the movie, Sister Act, before the nuns became famous movie stars. Here are the lyrics as I remember them:

Say yes! yes! yes!
To Michigaaaaaaaaan!

Say yes! yes! yes!
Saaaayyyyy yyyeeeeesssss!!

Catchy, eh?

Incidentally, if I keep using the word eh, it's because people from the Upper Peninsula--more commonly known as the U.P. (pronounced Da Yoopee)--were notorious for saying eh. Da Yoopers (as they were often referred to by us lowlanders) were also stereotyped as carrying many of the same dialectical traits as Canadians and Minnesotans, including saying yah or youbetcha instead of yes, and pronouncing the word "about" as aboat. Like any good stereotype, I never once met anyone from the U.P. who actually talked like that during the seven years I lived there. Nevertheless, I usually crack up whenever I see the van in Eugene with the bumper sticker that says, "Say yah to da U.P., eh!", though I'm also usually the only one in my group doing so, and the rest look at me as if I have three nostrils.

But anyway, there are no commercials for Oregon's sesquicentennial, at least not any that I've seen, not that I watch much TV. I guess that also means no cheesy songs to get stuck in my head and still remember 22 years later. Not that I'm complaining.

So happy birthday to Darwin, Lincoln, the NAACP, Oregon and my mom, whose birthday is Sunday. Crap, I better get a card out in the mail.

Oh, and since I'm discussing birthdays and anniversaries, happy ten year anniversary to Bill Clinton's being acquitted by the Senate during his impeachment trial. Ah, the good old days when the President was impeached on a technicality. The lesson to President Obama is firing judges for their politics (or lack thereof), allowing or even ordering torture, eliminating habeus corpus and due process, wiretapping phone lines without a warrant, lying to start a war, using tax dollars to fund religious groups, rolling back environmental regulations, civil rights, and civil liberties, playing guitar and celebrating John McCain's birthday while doing nothing for people dying in a flooded city, absolutely trashing the economy, racking up the biggest governmental debt not only in the history of this country but in the history of any country that has ever existed, and so on is all okay and apparently not worthy of impeachment, or even putting impeachment on the table. But don't lie about having sex during a several year long multimillion dollar witch hunt, or you might join the elite club of Clinton and Andrew Johnson (and Nixon if he hadn't quit first).

Rob

DW&F: Wine, Gourmet Cheese and Failure to Fail

Hello everyone!

What a great, if lazy, day. And who am I to rock the boat by working hard on an intro? So let's get to it!

Daily Win and FAIL!

Win: Wine and gourmet cheese


Today, Cathy and I enjoyed the last shipment of my Cheese of the Month Club that I received in December, which was a gift from her sister, Christy, and it was the gift that kept on giving all year long! We busted out two of the three cheeses from this shipment, one of which was a "Pinconning," a cheese named after the shithole town in Michigan that is located just north of Bay City, or in the area along the edge of the palm between the thumb and index finger if you're using a hand as a map as most Michiganders do. If you live somewhere else, you don't have the luxury of being able to display a body part as a map, except for a few places such as Rosebud, Texas.

Anyway, the Pinconning cheese brought up a whole lot of memories--which is not something I'm used to in a cheese--because it reminded me of my grandma's companion, Frank, who was essentially the grandpa I never had since both of my biological grandfathers died when I was a toddler. In fact, one of my grandfathers died on my second birthday, not that I really remember either of them.

Frank used to drive a truck from the Kraft cheese factory in Pinconning, Michigan, and he often talked about the cheese that he used to bring home after work. I had never tasted the cheese he talked about--at the time I was really only exposed to Velveeta and Kraft singles--but to this day I vividly remember Frank's stories of driving the truck. When I visited Michigan for the first time when I was seven years old and stayed with my grandma for the summer, Frank, who at the time was retired, was called back to work by Kraft as a fill-in. I clearly remember sitting on his lap after he got off work and commenting on his shirt, which had a grayish-black stripe across the belly from the truck's steering wheel rubbing against it. At that point, I remember deciding I wanted to be a truck driver because on his belly was irrefutable proof that he did something for a living, and the dirt on his belly was in my mind equivalent to a battle scar, which was more than I could say for the other adults in my life at the time. Sure, they worked hard as well, but did they come home with evidence of a large truck steering wheel? no way, and that's why Frank ruled!

The cheese also reminded me of my cousin, John, and my aunt and uncle, Diane and Dennis, who lived in Pinconning briefly. Just after I turned 16 in 1991, I visited them during spring break, and John took me to my first "real" concert: Van Halen (during the Sammy Hagar days). The three of them still lived there during a big turning point in my life, which was a year and a half later when my parents, brother, and I moved from Michigan to North Idaho. Not long after that, the three of them moved back to California, and all my ties to Pinconning were essentially cut off for good.

Yes, a cheese made me think of all this. And it was delicious, too, especially paired with a Three Buck Chuck Sauvignon Blanc, which the accompanying literature suggested (not the "Three Buck Chuck," but the "Sauvignon Blanc"). Good times.

We also had a Cypress Grove Purple Haze chevre, which went well with a Crane Lake (cheap) Sangiovese, again like the accompanying literature suggested. Although this cheese didn't dredge up deep memories from my childhood, it tasted fantastic, and the cheap wine from Rite-Aid actually turned out to be a suitable accompaniment.

Also, Cathy hit another home run when she made a batch of her homemade crackers! She is the only person I've ever known who makes her own crackers, and they're better than any store-bought Keebler Elf crackers by far!

The cheeses and the wine and the crackers mean only one thing: Win!

FAIL: ?

Hmm.

Today I can't think of a FAIL without feeling like someone who whines for whining's sake. Seriously, today was a great day, and I just can't come up with a FAIL. Sure, I could probably bust out some news headline about the Israel-Palestine conflict, or I could talk about Bill Richardson's apparent scandal, but these things seem to be par for the course these days, not some anomaly, and FAILs should be somewhat out of the ordinary.

No, today I experienced a FAILure to have a FAIL. It was a good day, and if you've been paying attention, you should know that I've resolved to appreciate what I have. That puts me at odds with the FAIL obligation, but I still think it's been a good resolution thus far because I've been much less of a whiny, cynical bitch than normal. Hooray for me! Of course, we'll have to see how long this lasts. Uh-oh, there I go again being cynical. FAIL!


I guess it could be worse. I could have a new, positive attitude and never post FAILs and just think everything is peachy. But that would be no fun...

Rob