Edward J. Pluchar - The Blogsplitter

I have no problem with this campaign.  Not in its simplest form.

Since my good friend Frank bought a motorcycle in college, and shared with me the perils of riding a bike in a world of cars, I’ve tried to be especially cautious and aware of motorcycles.  Everyone should be.

The one objection I have is that the campaign, in blanket fashion, would make victims of some real idiots.  One has a strong impression that many of the “not seen” motorcycles are those whose riders have more gasoline in their brains than in their bikes.  These are the guys (I haven’t seen any ladies doing it) who fly through traffic jams along the dotted lines, where anyone may be changing lanes and quite reasonably not notice them coming.  These are the guys who come up so quickly on a car, usually one going 5+ the speed limit on a freeway, that you might not notice them before they’re cutting you off by fractions of a bike (not car) length.

I applaud the campaign.  Let’s also have one that says, “Start Riding Sanely.”

If Usain Bolt stole your purse, you’d have to drive a car to catch him.

The Jamaican gold medalist won another world championship in the 100m dash, winning by .29s for a time of 9.86s.  He’s right over 23mph.

It’s too bad, for him, that he wasn’t alive around the time of Homer.  He’d have a big part in The Iliad.  Seriously, think about the feats of speed and daring Bolt could have been said to accomplish as the fastest human in the world.  And what a fabulous name.

“He struck like the very hand of Zeus from the sky, hardly visible at a distance before he was upon them, cutting their violet blood loose onto the ground.”

Here, in 2010, he has to settle for the BBC.

I have to crush most of the pills I take.  Most often it’s Excedrin, but this also includes my (semi) daily vitamin.  I do NOT have to crush my allergy pill, though!

Watching me do this, Adam Sikora commented that he had trouble swallowing pills when he was 9.  But, his mother reassured him, and he overcame his difficulty.  (If the tone doesn’t transmit through the text, the abrupt end of his story is his way of punctuating how ridiculous it is that a 29 year old man would crush his pills for apparently the same problem).

If I wasn’t busy shrugging it off, I might have asked, “Oh, you were rushed to the ER because of a pill you tried to swallow?”  (If the tone again does not transmit, I would subscribe to a different blog).

In any case, the “migraine” version of Excedrin crumbles fairly easily, spreading in chunks and powder as I split the pills up.

As an eventually related tie-in, I’ve been reading a book called “Attached Parenting,” which is peculiarly comforting.  One of the main points is that parents should be as responsive as possible to a baby’s cries, especially when it’s not easy.  As I’ve learned, it’s one of the hardest things to do persistently in the first year.  Particularly when Papa has a migraine.

A few days ago, this was the case (along with symptoms of my allergies), so I set Amelia up to play while I would be at the table crushing my pills.  She would be able to see me just a short distance away, and not feel “detached” by my action.

I was just about finished with the crushing when Amelia began to complain, and she crawled over so that I would pick her up.  Not wanting her to get in contact with the medicine, I typically would ask for her patience and finish taking the pills.  Since getting into the Attached Parenting book, it seemed more appropriate to pick her up.

There will come a day when she’s looking back on her earliest memories.  She’ll be 8, maybe 9, and trying to think back as far as she can.  There will be a vast reserve of beautiful memories, of playing and hugging and singing and eating.

Being a curious girl, the first thing she did when I picked her up was look to see what I was doing.  And on that day when she’s recalling her babyhood, she’s going to see the image of her father, working fastidiously on a small pile of white powder, sniffing and wiping his nose.  She’ll have no other conclusion to draw than this:  Her Papa was a coke-head.

I’m sad.

When the Bears were abysmal and the Bulls looked about the same…after another disappointing Cubs season…I thought, “Hey, the Hawks are doing well.  Maybe I’ll follow them!”

I did nothing at first.  I figured they’d start to crash and burn immediately after I began toying with the idea of devoting my sports fan energy to them.

They kept winning.  Impressive!

So I began to loosely follow them, treading as gently as I could.

They began to self-destruct!  I withdrew from that courtship, not wanting to be responsible for another Chicago sports team disaster.  Remember the Cubs in 2003?  That was probably one of my most passionate years.  Epic disaster.

(Seriously, it took Michael frickin’ Jordan to overcome this karmic funhouse of a saboteur).

It turns out that the Hawks are now doing very well.  I will only allow the news of their success come to me casually, through friends or the radio.  I don’t go looking for it - oh no!  None of that!

I know enough to know that the Hawks recently put away the Canucks, with their much acclaimed goalie, Roberto Luongo.  And all of this was to set up a link, with a rather funny story on the subject.

What a great show.

“Oh now you love the Ten Commandments.  Yet you’re the one who so conveniently forgot ‘Thou shalt protect thy father, and honor no one else above him unless it be-ith Me, thy sweet Lord.’”  - Gob

Chris Fox and I recently discussed the notion of the perfect joke, upon which no improvement could be made.  An example of this is Gob’s theme song, “The Final Countdown.”  Seriously, try to think of a better song for him.  You can’t.

Maybe you’ve heard the new Old Style radio commercials featuring brief improv bits.  They take a Chicago-centric topic and apply the following prompt:

“Kraeusening is the Old Style brewing tradition of making things better.  Today we’re going to kraeusen…”

They’re bad.  I know Adam Fischer feels me.

On the Red Line:  ”I’m going to install rollercoaster restraints so we can really whip around those turns.”

On the Asian Carp in Lake Michigan:  ”I was on the Internet the other day and they have their own social networking site, there’s so many of them!”  Also, “If I was going to kraeusen an asian carp, I would make a half man, half carp.  Carp centaur.  Carptaur.  Yeah!”

On the local bars:  ”If I could kraeusen my local bar, all the food would taste fried and be as good for me as a plate of hummus.”

The spots end with, “Everything you just heard was completely unscripted.”

I wish they would kraeusen Old Style commercials.

According to the linked article, the linked video is the first time we have ever captured an extra-terrestrial lightning storm with audio to match.  Be sure to read the article, which is short and fascinating.

There’s a student here with a rather whiny affect.  He sounds a little bit like StrongSad from www.homestarrunner.com.

Yesterday in the hall, I overheard him delivering the line in the title to this post.  That’s the whole reason eavesdropping was invented, to enjoy lines like that.

On an unexpectedly related note, I have on this blog commended the work of our staff here.  Their work remains commendable.  However, I’m a little put off by a pattern which seems slightly more prominent here than at other places, for reasons I haven’t fully understood:  I will sometimes say hello to a person, who seems to be the single, unmistakable subject of my greeting, and that person will say nothing in return.  In fact, they seem not to acknowledge my presence except in the effort it takes to pretend not to have heard me.

This is only a few of the staff, few enough to be numbered on one hand.  Still, should it be any number of people?

Maybe I’ll start greeting the toilets instead.

I came across an “advertisement” for vocations to the Catholic priesthood recently.  In it, the subject of the ad briefly tells his story, concluding that nothing has ever made him happier than bringing hope to those who have turned to despair.

Even more interesting, to me, was the following:  ”I have learned to put my faith in God, and not my weaknesses.”

As I said to Adam Fischer, this thought plunged into my heart, the rich realization of those words.

I have approached so many things, mundane and profound, from the baseline of my weaknesses.  ”These are the ways I can fail, so I will begin immediately to compensate for them.  My energy will be devoted to the worst-case scenario.  Then I will at least survive.”

I might have said, “Here is what I have accomplished before, and this is what I hope to accomplish.  I will concentrate my energy on the lofty goals.  God will either aid me and/or permit me to accomplish it, or there will be some purpose to my failing.”

It would be true and fair to say that there are others, many others, who have a similar downward inclination.  This new appreciation came to me on Good Friday, reshaping my experience of Lent and Easter this year.  If you find yourself slumping, counting your shortcomings and marking the pitfalls ahead, find your inspiration in the title to this post.

Amelia attends the day care where I work, appropriately named “Tiny Steps.”  She rides with me to get there, we spend lunch together, and then we ride home together.

It’s helped reveal to me that I am in love with my daughter.

I walk by the day care room at least 4-5 times a day, and when she’s there, I always peek in.  I’m always excited to peek in moments before I reach the day care room.

My tasks just before lunch are completed swiftly, with all efficiency.  My burden is lighter as I go to see her.

And she - I wait for this - she begs me to come hold her, she chews on one hand while the other grabs at my hair because that’s how excited she is.

I help her to walk, she shows me the toys and kids she’s playing with, we go outside into the sunshine, and then I leave her so that I can come back again later.