It was just about 14 years ago that I got up the courage to ask out my future wife. When I went to pick her up for our first date, LuLu came to meet me at the door. I like cats, so I got down on the floor with her (despite dire warnings about her supposedly mean temperament).

By the time Nancy was ready, LuLu was rolling around on her back, letting me pet her tummy (to much amazement). Fourteen years later, both Nancy and LuLu still seem to like me, and I love both of them more than ever.

What can I say; I’m attracted strong females!

The giant Asurindarahu wanted to see the Buddha, but was reluctant to bow before him. The Buddha, while lying down, presented himself as much larger than the giant. He then showed him the realm of heaven with heavenly figures all larger than the giant. After all this, Asurindarahu, the giant, was humbled, and made his obeisance to the Buddha before leaving.

This month marks the 5th anniversary of this blog, and the sixth anniversary of Wacky Mommy. We started Internet publishing back in 1997 with a little-known literary arts magazine, before anybody had heard of “blogs” and when Mark Zuckerberg was 12 years old. Around 1999, we started another site that morphed into something blog-like after veering through a number of different styles, and in 2005, when blogs were just taking hold, we started writing and hosting our own. In 2008, we started an influential public policy news and opinion site which we ran for two years in our spare time.

Now that Zuckerberg owns the Internet and all your personal data, to be sold on the free market to advertisers, blog traffic is way off. Many, many people don’t venture outside of the walled garden of Facebook… unless there is a link posted there.

Who remembers RSS feeds and readers? (I do!)

The thing is, this technology still works great, and there is great potential yet to be realized. We shelved our New Media networked journalism meta project almost a year ago, but now we’re thinking of dusting it off.

Now, here I go to link this post on Facebook.

A little behind here, but here’s what the front door of Chez Wacky looked on Halloween. Before all the lights were up and pumpkins carved, little Miss Missy intimated that it was kind of a half-cussed attempt at decor. When all was said and done, I think she agreed it was a worthy effort.

My new beer league team put me on forward… on right wing to be precise.

So far it’s working out pretty good. I’ve got two goals in two games, which is 25% of all the goals we’ve scored. We lost both games, but I think I can get used to playing up front. (Playing defense, I got zero goals in about 25 games.)

Don’t worry, though, I still shoot left.

I’m going to start calling our house Nutria-henge. On the Autumnal Equinox, the sun rose directly over the peak of Mt. Hood. Ten days later, it’s slipping south.

The sympathetic vibration of wood has brought me great pleasure on this plane. Even though its first purpose is aural, there is great visual beauty in a finely purposed slab of wood. Herewith is a photo appreciation.

Do me a favor; if you’re interested in these photos, view full screen. (After you press the play button, click on the little four-arrows icon in the lower right corner.)

A game we play in Ory-gun.

How to play: on your walk to school, count all the slugs you see, and also all the (non-human, non-slug) animals you see (bugs, birds, dogs, worms, etc.). Five sightings wins for that category. Or, if one gets to five, you can keep counting the other until you hit the school yard gate (that’s how it always used to be, until yesterday). Or you can change the rules as you go. Actually, I think it’s an unwritten rule that the rules will change at the whim of your third grader, and depending on whether we’re rooting for slugs or animals, and depending on how many of each are out on a given day.

Today, Jr. said the first one to five wins, period. Then, when animals got to five (two flies, a beetle and two dogs vs. four slugs), we decided we’d give the slugs one last chance. We were so engrossed in the contest, we didn’t realize the first bell had rung, and the playground was empty and quiet when we got there. Still, no more slugs.

Animals win again.

Life is funny and time is fleet of foot.

Twenty-one years ago, I moved to Oregon with a band of hippies, trying to make my living playing the bass and singing country- and reggae-hued psychedelia.

That band broke up soon after we disembarked from the ’63 Chevy Step-Van in Portland, and life took me through some twists and turns, including work in the colorful world of organic produce and stints as a band instrument repair man, sheet music sales clerk, and side man in a tex mex band.

After about eight years of mix and match, scraping the rent together somehow or another, I got engaged and decided I needed a career with a future. I retired the axe and got a cubicle job shuffling bits on computers, and dedicated myself to raising my two children. When they hit school, I got ridiculously entrenched in school politics and citizen journalism, which eventually spilled over into way too much civic involvement. I also got back into skating and started playing a lot of pickup hockey, which I likened to music in many ways.

After deciding the City of Portland and Portland Public Schools are hopelessly anti-child, we moved to the suburbs, where it was decided I should withdraw from politics and return to my music.

The funny thing about my brain is that while I present as well-adjusted, I’m a little OCD. I’ve had a couple of unfinished songs going through my mind for nearly 20 years. So even though I had veered into cumbia, salsa and Latin jazz when I dropped my musical career on its head thirteen years ago, I was unable to get back to that without first going back further and purging my mind of the country- and reggae-flavored songs from the early 90s.

I set up my studio with a Macintosh and started using it as my pensieve (for you non-Harry Potter devotees, a pensieve is a place to store memories, thus uncluttering one’s mind).

First to be extracted and stored away was “Falling off the Mountain,” a song I started writing with my friend Tony on Thanksgiving circa 1990 while hiking and camping in Oregon’s Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. I’m not much for lyrics, and Tony never did send me that second verse. So, as they say, “last verse, same as the first!”

It’s like magic… that song doesn’t go through my head anymore since I’ve committed it to bits!

Next up was a little flat-picking ditty I started writing after seeing Doc Watson at the Melody Ballroom, also in 1990, I think. It was right after Totem Soul broke up after our acoustic trio (the Holistic Ramblers) had a gig from hell at Portland’s Laurelthirst Public House.

Nancy‘s always saying she likes country music “cuz the men are always sorry and the women are always leaving.” With that in mind, I wrote a second verse and pulled “The Dark Desert Sky” out of my head and deposited it in the pensieve.

Now that those are out of my system, I want to write some stuff in this vein:

Banda Brothers (Ramon and Tony and friends) playing “Dime Caridad” (by trombonist/arranger/composer Francisco Torres) from their most excellent album Acting Up.

It’s amazing how much time I have, now that I’m not researching and writing in-depth exposes and going to school board meetings, urban planning meetings, community meetings and rallies. Now I can help my daughter discover the joy of wind instruments and ensemble playing. If you want to see me now, I’ll see you in the band room (not the board room), clarinet in hand.

When I wrote about Bob Dylan’s concert in Troutdale, Ore., I got an unexpected link from a Dylan fan site… Bam! Our server got the most hits in one day since the days we used to write about stupid stripedy clothes-wearing white people and their penchant for trying to start charter schools rather than send their precious spawn to school with poor, black and/or Spanish speaking kids.

Anyway, that was interesting, but also interesting was when a Japanese Dylan fan site picked up my post and excerpted it in Japanese. I don’t speak Japanese, so I’ll assume the person who translated it did a decent job, and isn’t responsible for the hilarious machine translation back to the English:

It Is not You, Babe
This man, funny shit.

Come on people rose in Mellencamp started playing. We were just like my DMZ. Mellencamp while playing, but we were sitting, but started to stand in front of you. The screaming started throwing ice cubes on your back then. hit lesbian couples wearing torn chunks of ice that had preceded. they are whining because people are standing before. I I thought it would sit for two more songs about Sume, she would not. “Hey! Wine T-shirt there! Sit!! (poweredbyfinewine of youth shirts)” … the voice of one another Gatchiritaipu man …. next thing you are, “Sit down!” he said.
…
Mellencamp looks at his wife “feel good” he said. Does your wife is hot Mellencamp?
…
I’m not a rock critic. But let me say it ?Ere “JustLikeaWoman” were floating in tears in her eyes. The encore was two songs not good, great. We drive back to Beaverton, sober and happy.

My old farts beer league team finished 5-5, 4th place out of eight, then lost to the fifth place team in the first round of the playoffs. I thought cuz I skipped it, my team would have a better chance… but no dice.