"The Good Land"

So last wednesday I headed south on a strange and wonderful journey that would eventually find me at my father's house in Waukesha that very evening. There I saw my stepmom's parents who are my only living grandparents and whom I had not seen in two years. I had several conversations with them over the next few days and while sitting and discussing things with my grandfather he asked me two, rather pointed questions. The first was, "So what are you going to do with your life?" To which I replied that I didn't know. The second, asked in almost an accusatory tone was, "So you're not married yet?" I admitted that I was not as of yet, though someday hoped to be.

On friday jason, sasha, and wrenn picked me up and we proceeded to Josie's residence in milwaukee. There Jason and I discussed life over 2 liters of jobber juice (~300 ml of gin to 700ml of gatorade) Some highlights that night and morning were watching two squirrels have sex, catching snippets of a man's sex life as he discussed them on the phone as we tried to sleep, and a rather voyeuristic moment when I looked across the street and realized there was a naked woman by the window. This led jason and I to wondering what made voyeurism so interesting. After thinking about it a little my answer is as follows, when you watch someone and they think no one's watching you can catch a glimpse of the unguarded self. You can see how a person acts when they feel safe from social censure. How odd that moments like that so-often end with nose-picking. I suppose I should note that I think my take on voyeurism at the time we were drunk was shall we say, less cliched but more because-she's-naked-damnit oriented in its arguments.

Saturday morning we arrived at the fields right about the time the games were slated to begin and I saw rachael and rob whom I had not seen in some time, which made me very glad. Being hungover on saturday was an odd way to start a tournament but it seemed to work out ok, I also had that odd sense of superiority to everyone else at the field who was feeling fresh and youthful; the new mantra or shall we say guiding principle adopted that morning was that you could not win the party saturday night if you weren't hung over saturday morning. We finished 0-4 on saturday but we lost 3 of those games by a combined 4 points, which was a little frustrating. The Jobbers is an interesting team. I feel that we have a discrepancy on the way certain people view the team. I just want to have a good time and winning is secondary to that, hence I don't really live and die with every play on the field, don't take speeches too seriously, and wonder where my sippy beer is. I felt that on the whole the team felt this way and as a result we played really well at the beginnings of games because we were pretty loose. This is opposed to my college teams that opened games poorly. Now though, we get this O'shit thing, like we're tied with CLX at 5-5, or we're up 7-2 against a team that's probably on the same level as us, we must be good, we should start trying and it all goes to hell. Where as in college, being down took the pressure off and we either played respectable the rest of the game, stormed back and lost when it got close again, or very rarely came back and won. I feel if we could just hang loose more we'd do better. I don't know how to do that. The answer though probably is not trying to catch a quick 30 second standing nap on the line, like I was trying to on saturday when I started to feel a little funny from the gin. The other thing I didn't like was too much sideline assistance, specifically what I should do with the disc every time I catch it.

I bumped into kevin tucker on saturday and after the games we joined my family for the brewers game where we got complimentary Bob Ueker russian dolls. That was pretty sweet. We then managed to beat kevin's team the next morning and then we won our last game as well, we finished 13th which means we were at least even with our intial seeding. I also saw some polo, it looked like a really large version of a little kids' soccer game where they all follow the ball around the field.

Then an uneventful trip back here. Not a bad few days, hopefully I can get down for CHC and we can improve a little from cooler.

Since writing the above I attended the Great Minnesota Get Together, which in other states is called the "state fair" I believe. Was interesting to see some of the exhibits, though the orchid and bonzai exhibits deserve special mention. The food was crazy, they must have had about 200 food vendors there. I ate a scotch egg on a stick which I couldn't pass up after hearing of Raz's ill-fated encounter with them. For those who don't know, a scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and cooked (read deep-fried) to "perfection", Raz threw up on a bet to eat five of them. I also had a belgium waffle dipped in choclate with whip cream and sprinkles on a stick and some delicious deep fried cheese curds. Incidentally the "on a stick" selling point extended to everything there for sale practically: pickles, origami, t-shirts, and so on. Well that's all I got for this entry. Ciao babes.

A few things forgotten on the way to the post button.

So two more minor points from the weekend. When we went grocery shopping to get stuff for the carrot cake and some homemade overly large squash ravioli 2 interesting things happened. The first was that the young, socially awkward, clerk at wal-mart put his foot in his mouth. Charlie and a girl EB were buying some food and the clerk asked if EB was Charlie's Mom. Charlie, a bit taken back, responded with "What?" The clerk than guessed "girlfriend" which is sadly not correct either. Charlie informed the young clerk that guessing whether or not a young woman is a young man's mother is probably an ill-considered approach to small-talk and the woman in particular don't care for it. The clerk than said, "Oh, so you know about woman do you?" To which Charlie replied, "well obviously one of us doesn't." I was amused by the whole thing, especially since the kid looked down his nose at me when I bought a plain red ball, and especially in combination with toothpaste. As if getting a toy ball and colgate toothpaste marked me as a deviant or social pariah. I can't help but think what he would have said if I got some condoms and a red ball. But walmart probably doesn't sell condoms so its a mute point.

The second thing was a signal from God but I don't know what it means. We pulled into a parking lot where there were two shopping cart return dealys across the parking lane from eachother. As we pull in, a cart in the near one is pushed back by the wind, swings around 180 degrees and crosses the parking lane and situates itself in the middle of the other return dealy. I think that this description doesn't really do the thing justice. Oh well, there it is.

How far is heaven?

The answer = 1 keg

Sorry I am q uite drunk at the momebnbt.

As the astute reader will no doubt have noticed I misspelled some words in the previous line and I make no proclamations of spelling error free in the next bit.

So last tuesday I didn't quite do total justice to that post. In addition to ross breaking down the door and having to get a new one he did another fun thing. He hiked up his shorts so it looked like he was wearing a large black diaper. At this point Charlie hid on the stairs and tried to pretend he was my conciousness and adivise me to listen to what ross was saying. This involved much confusion on my part as I tried to understand charlie without looking at him (he would hide below the wall of the staircase if I looked that way and declare it was very hard to be my concious with me always looking at him) but he proclaimed I should listen to the man with the black diaper --so I did and he advised me to not dance with the woman with large breasts because she was a temptress and would not follow up on what she seemed to offer. To this I had to reply that I already knew this fact and it did not faze me at that particular moment in time becasue I just wanted to tdance. But on to this weekend.

Friday night after work we went to "famous dave's" and got some fucking BBQ meat and enjoyed it. After this we got a keg of beer for about 6 people. We drank well on friday night. With keg stands, the introduction of beer die, and other hilarities of joy and good cheer. On saturday we began the drink early. We constructed an effigy of Bathtub Jim (a man my good friend from louisiana came up with as he tried to say bathtub gin), drank a lot and then took the keg and had a parade around various important things dressed as indians. At one point I took my clothes off and paraded about sort of leading the expedition if you will, but that is another matter, we fucking rocked with a parade aboard a mechanical beast of burden and had a lot of fun. So we had the parade but I should mention that before the parade we smashed choke cherries to help a coworker make choke cherry wine of which he promises to send this humble scribe a bottle. So we had lots of read cheery juice, I smeared this all over my skin to make it more indian like for the parade, incidentally I apologize for the lack of PC in this post, b ut it is unavoidable as I have done a lot of things this weekend that are not PC.

So we started to watch Strangebrew that night and I fell asleep. today I woke up and we fucking went tubign but I should mention what happened saturday in the early morning as it is a federal offense. As charlie and I discussed the history of recent civilization, others, shall we say more given to sexual intercourse than scholarly discourse ( they didnb't go the tue U of C after all), persons took the mail box and hid it in one of the buildings. It was a delicious manuever as I saw it the next morning and the mail box sort of dominated the living room, what with it not supposed to be there and all. but on with the tubing., We took a lot of the leftover beer, perhaps 3 gallons worth and went tubing down the rum river, I wish I was making that up, it took about 2.29 hours but we finished the beer and had a good time getting back. We then have spaghetti and sausage with carrot cake that I helped prepare and was amazing succulent in its tastefulness. Than I drunk and several others scared away the more religiously orientated , though I learned in retriospect that it was another much more than myself. we than proceeded to throw kitchen steak knives at a melon on the belief that whomever stuck it would be the most soberest to drive us to fatboys, the neighbory watery hole, but when charlie sank the knife through both melons we decided not to go as he was quite drunk and frankly the moment had passed. They are now watching ET.

Some things that I forgot to mention. earlier in the summer charlie found a blue hat that says the name Reichel Korfmann on it. This is hilarious for reasons that probably don't need to be explained. Ross and I have subsequently found blue hats that say lester and thor respectively so we are now lester and thor koffman. We adoptede a girl nicknamed EB as our mother and formed the korfmann clan. It was this clan that went tubing. Being thor kormann has proven to be very exhilirating. Well I am drunk and will post this, if I have said anything offensive I hope you will forgive me, if I have not than I hope you will forgive me anyway. I'll probably edit to some degree tomorrow but in any case I've got to go and watch the movie. Cheers and hopes that random fresh donuts find you in your daily adventures, Joe.

Hello this is the postcript. I forgot to mention that we all found rather affordably priced used suits this weekend and are wearing them at the moment. I hope to wear this jacket to cooler if I can get the stains off it. Hoppe to see many of the readers of this space in a week, if not fuck you, I'm kidding of course, I love all of you, as few readers as I have now. Ta ta

joe "fuc'ing drun'" lit'e

incidentally the title of this post referecnes a pretty good song that ross has. I believe it's called heaven but in any case it's quite good and I liek the tnaeme. What a fabulous weekend honestly, I couldn't be happier. Ta ta, see you bitches in a week or more, depending if you play on jobbers or not.

So last week was interesting. We have been taking root samples at work which involves taking a 4.5 ft long metal bar, pounding it into the earth, and then extricating it by whatever means necessary but basically limited to pulling up really hard and twisting. This led to a rather hysterical, in retrospect, accident where keith, while using a handle connected to the top of the bar by a pin, (sorry I can't describe that better, basically imagine a removable crossbar like the top line on the "T" that is connected to the "l" part by a pin) broke the pin while pulling up really hard. This led to him punching himself hard enough in the face that it required four stitches.


So the family came up and we spent the weekend at St. Croix state park which is a decent campground. Basically did a lot of camp cooking, canoing down the st. croix, and riding bikes to a beach and having a picnic. I think everyone had a good time, was good to see caitlin and sean that at 6 and 10 are growing as fast as kudzu to use a floral cliche, and of course the ol' stepdad, mother and bro. Andy and I came back to the creek friday night to party at the dome. Was a good time, with much dancing and a group streaking event that involved at least 5 first time streakers. That was fun. I don't know if everyone was certain we were going to do it, but I admire their courage at not shirking even after a naked me confronted them with the terrible reality of what they were about to do. Was definitely the longest streak in my life, I think I ran/walked about 3/4 of a mile. That was fun.

So its now two days after the above was written and several things of note have happened. The first is that two people built a huge city out of mud that has canals, palaces, condominiums, a soap factory, a hydroelectric damn, and so on. The best part about it is that in order to have more "canal front property" they ran the water initially through a pvc pipe that was bridged over a different part of the canal. Effectively forming a long huge oval in which to further develop the site. I'll try to post a photo in the future.

Then there was tonight. It was Robyn's last day here and several others are leaving in the near future. We decided to have a few drinks, although i should note that since I am sick with a cold, that effectively meant most people aside from myself. It was quite fun with random dancing and such but got taken a little too far and now a door is broken. We'll see how that plays out. In any case that's all I got for now.

Books, discs, and an oddly placed can of beer

So admittedly it's been a very long time since I posted. Numerous things have happened, not all good, but surely not all bad. Rather than rack my brain for week old memories I'll try to focus on more recent activities and goings-on.

I'm reading Eats, shoots & leaves at the moment which is a book about punctuation. I first heard of it from Alison who was one of my many patient paper editors in college, and picked it up at a demi-used book shop in uptown, Minneapolis. So while I may now butcher my sentences as badly as before, at least now it is more ironic that I am doing so. Another book I picked up at the store was Our Gang which is a satirical work by Phillip Roth about the Nixon administration, or the Tricky admin. as it is called in the book, and tries to make light of all the subtle contradictory stances taken by tricky to be politically expedient rather than morally congruent. This includes him thinking about the political ramifications about giving the right-to-vote to the unborn, but then debating whether or not to arrest than shoot or just shoot the boy scouts who are protesting him, because they think he promotes sex by his defense of the unborns' rights and is a sensualist. I also picked up The Best Recipe and Democracy in America to help both my cooking and my historical sense of whom I am cooking for.

Went and played disc golf at a real course with real golfing discs today for the second time in my life. Did ok, on a 12 hole course the first round I was 10 over par with two pars and the second I was 2 over par with 3 birdies and 4 pars. I believe that my play steadily improved as I learned how to compensate for the under-stability of the discs and drive them straight and the fact that the second round I was quite drunk-at a new personal best of 2 beers-and grunted a lot more when driving the disc. On the way back I purchased two whole chickens.

One of these chickens is currently being grilled in a unique, to this writer at least, manner. We rubbed oil, adrien's seasoning mix and Dijon mustard around it, under the skin and in the cavity and then put a half-full beer can up its arse and set it on the grill. This is called a "beer-can chicken" and supposedly is quite good. For those who worry that we are using good beer you can be rest assured that its only gloeck's. A brand that costs two dollars less per 24 pack than the next cheapest case. For all that though it isn't that bad.