I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed. - George Burns
The counter says that 2846365 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
The new TV season is nearly upon us. It is really the only time during the year, when I become completely immersed in plotting and planning my TV viewing. Sure, I watch one or two shows 
every week without fail, but during the Fall Preview Season, I am a devoted fan of the medium.
I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. Of course, it made more sense then because I was a TV viewing fool. Because my parents both worked, I was able to watch far too much of it. I knew theme songs, I knew characters, I knew plots. I was also a big fan of the commercials, although they are much better now. I was the most TV watching kid that lived. My childhood was devoted to the information and fun that TV brought to our living room.
As soon as the Fall Preview TV Guide is on sale, I snatch it up. I pour over it like a bookie over the racing form. I compare time slots, and I read everything I can find about the new shows. I learn what I can about the returning shows. I carefully lay out my viewing plan of action and carefully plan alternative viewing options for those shows that bust in the middle. I lay aside stores for refreshment and I watch the calendar and the clock. I swear the kids to promises of silence and good behavior and 
when the time arrives, I sit down with remote.
I have to admit that I am usually disappointed with each season, but the enthusiasm and excitement that comes from the promise and anticipation remains high. I’m ever the TV optimist.
So, this week begins the first of the new shows and ever the optimist, I am crossing my fingers that at least one is a jewel will shine bright!
Today’s Cool Link: Female Celebrity Smoking List. Now, I am no fan of smoking. I don’t like it, never did...basically my attitude is that if me and mine don’t have to breathe it, then I’ll keep my mouth shut. This site is hard core anti-smoking....far more so than I have ever been! Pick a woman actor and see if she’s ever smoked, if she smoked on TV or in the movies or both, did she quit smoking or maybe even if she ever thought about smoking.
I have a friend who is a recreational fan dancer. Robert brings his fans along to every dance he attends. I’m sure that Sally Rand would be quite impressed because like her, Robert is very skilled at this and his use of the fans is fascinating.
His physical stature is quite short, about 5’6” and he is plump, but when he gets in his fan dancing groove, he is grace personified. Robert has done his thing on stage, but most of the time, I see him at regular group dances, dancing happily by himself on a crowded dance floor. Even though he takes quite a bit of space to wave those big fans around, I’ve never seen anyone begrudge him the room he needs. And, I should point out that unlike Sally Rand who performed while butt naked, Robert wears his regular, every day street clothes.
His fans are works of art. He owns several pairs but my personal favorite are a pair of bright red feather fans with red sequin detail glued or sewn on along the spines of the ostrich feathers. They are very large, about 3 1/2 feet in length and they must be any burlesque dancer’s envy. All of his fans are on display in his living room which makes his house look a little bit like a bordello and the dust on them makes me sneeze when I enter.
Obviously, people notice Robert. He stands out in a crowd but he has a very low creepy factor and the folks here just view him with a certain amount of amused tolerance. I have known Robert for about 17 years and he was one of the first people I noticed when we first moved here. He is college educated and a very nice person. He is special because he likes to fan dance and he gladly shares his encyclopedic knowledge about fan dancing with anyone who asks, which they do.
Robert is one of those characters that make a home town special. He also thinks he’s a vampire, but that’s another story.
Today’s Cool Link: eugenemirman.com. Eugene Mirman is a New York City comic and this is just about the oddest personal web site I’ve ever seen.
Quick entry...... Last night I received an email from an bei, who writes a very funny blog called hashai. The email announced that she and Pineapple Girl were drinking Mojitos and inviting all who are regular readers to join them in a real time chat. So, being the completely spontaneous person I wish I was, I joined in.
It was very nearly possible to smell the rum flowing and they were so funny. Take a gander and try not to be too shocked: Mojito Madness.
Today’s Cool Link: The Keo Project. Quick! Before December 31 st , hurry to this site and leave a message for your faraway decendents. Keo is a satellite that will be blased off into space by UNESCO. It’s kind of like that message on the Voyager space craft from Carl Sagen’s Golden Record, except that Keo is supposed to come back home in 50,000 years. No, I won’t be here to check the truth of it.
We just experienced our own mini-version of the Harmonic Convergence. Yesterday our seventeen year old refrigerator started giving us signs that it was rapidly approaching heart failure. We knew it was coming because it did die last year and 
came back to life...but only after enough time has passed to spoil all the food inside.
On Friday, the milk was just a little warmer than we like so we cranked the temperature gage a notch or two and it cooled down to give us that frosty sensation we like. Yesterday, the refrigerator started making those funny preliminary noises that always evolve into the death throes that come when a compressor that fails and an engine dies. It was still cool, but there was ominous portent in the kitchen.
We went shopping. For the very first time ever, we hit the groove in major investment shopping. We had the immediate need, we had the funds, and Labor Day Weekend is a big sale weekend. We knew what we wanted and fifteen minutes after arriving at our favorite appliance store, we had our replacement. It was the best of all worlds.
We had to remove a small cabinet that hung over the old refrigerator to make more room for the new one. It came down easily and we reinstalled it in the laundry room with only a small effort. We are eating exclusively from the freezer and refrigerator so that there will be very little food to store in ice chests while we wait for delivery on Tuesday or very little that will be lost if its death is premature.
Why am I telling this tale? Because nothing in our lives ever goes this easily and I just wanted to share our relief.
Today’s Cool Link: lindkvist.com. This site is the on-line portfolio for Andreas Lindkvist. I don’t know Andreas but his web site is filled with happy little doodle creatures, downloadable construction projects, and a selection of email cards that needed to be printed. One of my favorites is to the right. Have fun!
I just realized that Riso gets more attention in these WebLog entries than any other single source, except for me that is and after all, this thing is about me.
Today I was on Poop Patrol. I took my little scoop thing and walked all over the yard hunting down poop. What a glory job this is and because I haven’t done it for a while, there was plenty to scoop. I marveled at his output thinking that if there was a dog show award for the most prodigious producer of doggy scat, my dog would come out on top. He may not ever make Best of Breed at Westminster, but he is number one in this specialty.
All the time, I kept singing that Tennessee Ernie Ford song with a small adaptation.
Ya load sixteen tons what’a ya get....
Another day older and deeper in sh*t.
Today’s Cool Link: Orisinal : Morning Sunshine Ferry Halim, the woman that designed this site and all the games, is very clever and the games are fun. You can catch eggs, photograph space ships, catch bees in bubbles, and oh so much more. Make sure you check out all of her special effects and enjoy the graphics! Thanks to Erica for this one!
I am currently participating in an on-line forum where the merits of the new Funky Fries by Heinz are being 
debated. Like lots of parental choices, there are trade-offs and sometimes I make choices based on what I think is just plain funny. Funky Fries are funny to me.
Funky Fries are a new “taste sensation” offered up by Heinz and promoted by Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. They are basically french fries but in strange colors and flavored with unusual flavors and odd shapes, unusual odd, and strange for french fries that is. They come in Sour Cream and Jive flavor, Seasoned Crunchy Rings, Cocoa Crispers which are chocolate colored and flavored, Kool Blues that are crispy blue colored fries, and Cinna-Fries that are cinnamon and sugar flavored fries. So far, we have tried the Kool Blues and they are fine and tasty and I believe more healthy for my kids than the deep fried versions at McDonalds and Arby’s.
I did not buy them because I thought they were the best food choice for my kids. I bought them because I thought the kids would get a kick out of them as a side dish to a hamburger. They are not a major part of their diet, nor do they substitute for any of the major food groups, unless blue has become a food group. If that’s the case, we are meeting the blue food group requirement.
Anyway, the discussion in this forum is getting heated with lots of condemnation from someone with a not so nice name blasting blue french fries and chocolate flavored potatoes. He is quite rabid in his passion and I think maybe he must secretly hate Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.
I have a long history of liking food colored in abnormal ways. When I was a teen and forced into the servitude that parents impose on their poor poor children, I had to take my turn at cooking dinner. I made this effort fun by adding food coloring to almost everything that was served. More than once we had beet red biscuits and indigo boiled eggs and sea green lemonade. My parents and sisters came to expect a colorful presentation every time I cooked.
Once when my grandpa was expected for dinner, my mom was running late and asked me to make dinner. Like always, I was liberal with the food coloring and served up a dinner that looked like a Monet painting. It was beautiful and when I served it up, my family gasped...I’m sure it was a gasp of appreciation. We all looked at my grandpa to watch for his reaction. What we had all forgotten was that he was color blind, monochromatic color blind so all he saw was what he always saw, a plate full of grays and whites. I was hugely disappointed and he was hugely amused that the joke had backfired.
So, now when I make a kelly green milkshake for my children or whip up blue swirled mash potatoes, I always think about my grandpa and smile.
