Five Great Songs

I’ve decided to take some money that came my way this Christmas and buy five songs. I really do not have that many songs in mind, but five seemed like a fairly reasonable amount to play with.

I thought I would solicit some help from five or six of you who read this blog. So I ask you: If you could only listen to five songs the rest of your life, what would they be? Please leave your selections in the comment section. I am not saying I will chose from your suggestions (for instance, Brandon, no Ricky Martin numbers will be making my play list), but I am interested in what you have to say.

I did a little research to find some really popular albums and songs. Looking up top albums in different places yields very different answers. Amazon’s Listmania had many top album lists full of albums I’m sure only the list maker knew about. Wikipedia was helpful, but gave different answers for world-wide and American sales. We may have produced Michael Jackson, but at least we didn’t make him #1. The Eagles came up near the top in many lists, which didn’t surprise me, but AC/DC’s Back in Black really surprised me as almost always in the top five. I really think record books do not go back far enough, because no Elvis Presley album makes any top 10 sales charts I could find. He does show up in some of the top singles charts.

But the singles are a wholly different animal. “Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel” sold over 4 million copies, but so did Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now.” “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is there along with “The Chipmunk Song.” In fact if you wanted to compose a song list featuring five of the top 25 singles ever sold, it could go like this:

1. "Islands in the Stream", Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton;
   
2. "I Think We're Alone Now", Tiffany;
   
3. "Ballad of the Green Berets", Sgt Barry Sadler;
   
4. "Whoomp! (There It Is)", Tag Team;
5. "Macarena", Los Del Rio

I hope everyone can agree that best-selling does not equal best. After all, I could not find Audio Adrenaline’s “Bloom” or Steve Taylor’s “Squint” on any of these lists.

RED

On a recent visit to Jill’s parents home in Iowa, I saw something amusing enough to share. The television was on for background noise (do all families do this, or just the one’s I’ve been around?), and an infomercial came on. It was one I have never seen before. They were selling a bar stool as exercise equipment. Granted it was a low bar stool with handles, but still. They said it was used by firefighters. It did not mention mail carriers, psychiatrists or other overweight guys in Cheers. Apparently, a shirtless Norm wouldn't sell the things as well as the bikini clad model they continually showed during voice overs: “Do you want tight abs and smooth lines like this?” I would have been more impressed if she would have had really flabby arms and legs but perfect abs. Somehow I think she might use something besides Red.

Other highlights of the show included people falling off those “difficult to use” exercise balls. Also, while the models were using the machine, their abs would flash as though their muscles were filled with neon lights. They continually referred to the device as “Red.” As in, “Using Red for just 30 minutes a day will cut your waistline 7 inches.” Maybe red is the name of some kind of hormone that speeds up metabolism, so their statements are technically true. The name is the biggest marketing blunder. In the internet age your name should be uniquely searchable (my theory of why Microsoft named their media player Zune, try finding something else called that on Google). I vote for the Norminizor. I also think you should have a little voice recorder to say your name into, so that every time you start to exercise it would greet you like a bar full of people where everybody knows your name. Unfortunately, I cannot find any place on their website to leave suggestions.

Merry Christmas Everyone

I hope all your Christmas dreams came true.

Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I have made a Christmas discovery. Besides being a Satanic plot to commercialize Christmas, the Santa Claus Bringing Presents Christmas Eve Myth (which is the proper academic term) may have been started to serve a useful purpose regarding little children. Have you ever tried to have a bunch of brightly wrapped boxes in a room in which a one-year old spends most of his time? We waited to set these out until we were leaving for the Miller Christmas in Iowa. We should have had Cannon in the car first. I don't know if he realizes the presents are inside, but he thinks the paper and boxes are wonderful things to play with.

If you look closely at the picture, you'll notice the bottom two feet are strangely devoid of ornaments. If it wasn't a pre-lit tree, I am sure he would have taken the lights as well.

A couple of ice pictures

This would have been very beautiful if... Well okay it was beautiful anyway, but it stinks for the people who lost their electricity (and those of us working to get it back on).Does taking pictures of lines qualify as working to get the lights back on?

The two horizontal ice cycles in this picture are power lines. These might have still been energized.

Here is what happens when a power line makes it to the ground without tripping the breaker. That burnt piece of fence looking thing is three-phase line. The dirt closest to the wire had crystallized. Pretty cool stuff. Stay away from downed power lines (and don't do drugs; politicians do reports about that sort of thing now).

Florida Anyone?

Not much to post except that this week I have spent as much time at work as I have at home. All because of a little old winter storm. There are pictures here and here. I hope to post some more that I have taken once I get some time away from the office. By the way the picture from the sun with the lineman reaching over the "hot" line with a chainsaw. The line is not hot. That would be really stupid and it irritated the lineman in question.

Hunting

Deer season was the last couple of weeks in Missouri. For the first time since I was I left college, I was in the woods during rifle season. For two of the days I got up and in the woods before sunrise. This has now been proven to be a remarkably silly thing to do. I have only one time seen any deer before 8:30, and then they were standing on the path to my stand well before sunrise.

I did have one great insight this year though. Deer hunting for me is the same as trying to read one of those Magic Eye books. I sit in the woods usually in the early morning or late evening with low light. I look through the trees searching for an animal form between the bark and over the fallen leaves. Slowly my eyes glaze over as my focus shifts to a distance filled only with air attempting to see something that is not there. This continues until some noise draws my attention and I flip my head around, in a motion that will one day give me whiplash or a concussion, to see what is usually a squirrel.


Monkeys are Evil

I have made this point before, but never have I had such dramatic proof as this story entails. These monkeys are taking over the city and have already killed the deputy mayor. They are "rampaging neighborhoods." Not convinced yet, then read how these monkeys are attacking children. Pull quote from Dehli woman: "The monkey followed me in and buried its teeth in my baby's leg."

When Jill and I had just started dating, I took her to Colorado to visit Brandon with me. We took a day to visit the Denver zoo, to which I had never been. We were walking around the place and Brandon and Jill decided we should go to the monkey house. Not wanting to seem like a wimp, I don't think I showed any immediate fear. I do not remember passing through a gate or anything, but we somehow entered an enclosure and I looked up. There were ropes overhead, and I realized that at some point the monkeys had been loose or were loose out here where I was walking. I stopped dead.

Jill really enjoys doing an impression of me asking, "You don't think the monkeys are loose out here do you?" It is really amazing that she still married me. But fear of monkeys when you are in a zoo and there are ropes overhead is not an irrational fear. Just ask the woman with the gimpy-legged baby.


The Golden Compass

My second-favorite sports writer did a segment on the Golden Compass series of books (it's more than 2/3 down the page, look for Nicole Kidman). I had heard there was some kind of controversy, but this is a great description and article. I have no desire to see the movie, but I really want to read the books now.

A New Reader

In the interest of increasing the readership of my blog, we are having another child. This one, like his/her brother, is scheduled for July. So by say Nov. 2011, she/he should be able to read At Gnat (I'm not exactly writing on a graduate level here). At that point he/she should have 10-15 blogs to catch up on.

This raises the interesting question: Would I want my children reading my blog? Since most of you readers are also bloggers, I would ask you the same question. I haven’t really decided on an answer to that question for myself. As of now Cannon wouldn’t understand any slightly inappropriate reference. But I do not really want to hasten his understanding either. On a related note, can we come together to get the word “erection” banned from commercials during football games. I mean Cannon loves football, but I don’t want him to start asking, “Daddy, what’s an erection?” Now that I think about it, I believe Michelle banned her reading age child from my blog.

Halloween

My son is incredibly cute (so much so that I sometimes ask myself if he is mine, until I see him do something like watch TV or try to catch a ball). There is nothing quite like Halloween to bring out the cuteness in an already cute kid. Jill and I volunteered to help with the harvest hoedown our church put on this year. It is fun event where there are different booths setup around the gym for kids to play games and get candy. The TNT group volunteered to help with the cup stacking race, and Jill and I were a little afraid we would be stuck there all evening. We needn't have worried several of the faithful showed up and we really had to do nothing. A special thanks here to Ashley who stayed from start to finish.
Back to my kid. Jill has been excited about this Halloween since the last one ended. I think she bought his costume on January 3rd, once Christmas was safely out of the way. Cannon was Yoda from Star Wars (which we had to explain to an unreasonable number of people). As you can see putting fluffy green ears and a robe on a kid only lets the cuteness shine. Sadly, I think some other people got better pictures of him than we did.

FATHERHOOD

Being a father is still a strange experience for me. Tonight we had an event a Jill's school, and Cannon really did not want to be there. I found myself telling him that in life we sometimes have to do things we do not like. I am not completely sure why, but saying it I felt like a hypocrite. I took him shopping and then home.

A LITTLE ABOUT MY JOB

Today I was helping get the budget ready for next year. We started by inputing last years actual expenses into a spreadsheet (here I might mention that a business or accounting degree is worthless, go get an Associates in Excel if you want to work in the real world). I discovered a discrepancy in the totals of two forms.

I brought this to the attention of our accountant who frantically started running numbers and talking me through what was happening. In short 15 minutes working, 1 1/2 hours watching someone else work.

Katy Trail

Last Saturday (10/27/07) I went on a bike ride. Not your normal ¾ mile cruise around town with the family. I went with Chris Sumpter, Ken Lanning, and my father on a 44.7 mile Katy Trail ride. We had been “planning” this trip for several weeks. It started when Ken, Dad, and I took our families on a five mile ride one evening in early October. We thought it would be great to get some guys together and do an overnight trip on the trail which goes from Clinton, MO to St. Louis.

Our original goal didn’t pan out as none of my friends could be convinced that they were in any kind of shape to make this trip fun. I would give them a harder time but for what follows.

Ken did get Chris on board, and we shortened it to a one day trip where we would ride out from and come back to Clinton. We left about 9:00 in the morning and started out strong and fast. Dad set the pace at about 9.5 miles/hour. I don’t know how that compares to what you all bike at, but it is much faster than I was accustomed to. At about 40 minutes in, I started to feel overdressed on the cool morning. So we stopped and Ken and I took off our sweatshirts and we all took in some water. At that point I realized I was in trouble. I just didn’t feel quite right. We started again, and I fell behind. I told them not to wait for me. I was just going to get another drink. As soon as they were out of sight, I lost the egg Mcmuffin I had consumed that morning as well as half a liter of water. Five minutes later my stomach decided there was nothing more in there and it calmed down. Dad called my cell phone asking what was going on and I told him. At this point I had decided I was going home. I had already tried to call Jill to pick me up from whatever little town was up ahead, but she was out of the house. Dad came riding back and gave me the keys to his truck. I said that I felt better and would probably ride to the next town before turning back. I meant it, too; I was done.

We rode on and found Chris and Ken had waited for me. I will admit I wasn’t happy to see them. I knew that I couldn’t turn back as long as they were stopping for me. And they stopped every time.

I will say here that neither of them seemed real upset about the new pace we kept for the rest of the day. I should say, though, that neither of them gave me a hard time about throwing up, either, so I should be grateful.

We made it out to the highest point on the Katy Trail, which gave us the psychological lift of thinking it was downhill all the way back. Moral of the story: McDonalds and physical activity do not mix (also, as Chris pointed out, “Maybe we didn’t properly prepare for the trip by riding 0 miles Monday, 0 Tuesday, 0 Wednesday, 0 Thursday, 0 Friday, and 45 miles Saturday.”)

It is now Sunday afternoon. Cannon is down for a nap, I am sitting at the computer, and where is Jill? She is outside standing over a ditch with a leftover sausage, trying to trap a neighbor’s kitten that wandered onto our property. If she tells you that she did it because she wants Cannon to see it; remember, Cannon is down for a nap.

Zune is here

I received my Zune this week. For those of you who missed my previous post, I won Microsoft Zune playing games at club.live.com. Anyway, I did not get a choice on color, but the white looks great. Jill thought I needed a case so she ordered me one. It should get here next week. I needed it tonight when I dropped it from a height of about five feet onto our hardwood floors. It bounced about three times, doesn't appear to be a scratch and still working. Jill knows me well.

Family Trips

Last week I was able to post a blog even though I was at the Association of Missouri Cooperatives Member Services/Communications Conference. It was at the Lake of the Ozarks and one afternoon I got out of sessions early enough for Jill, Cannon and I to drive down to Ha Ha Tonka State Park. It was a mini-vacation for us as we haven’t really been able to travel as a family. I look forward to the time when we can take a full week and drive all night and all day to get three states away from wherever we are living to see something slightly different from our own back yard.

I remember trips with my own family very fondly now, although in the back of my mind I think I have blocked out a sufficient amount of bickering and complaining. I also remember very fondly one of the best trips of my life with Brandon, and partially Brain. But that will have to wait for another blog.

In lieu of doing a better job writing I am going to post some pictures from our trip. For those of you who haven’t been there, the ruins in the picture are of a castle-like mansion that was built on what is now the park. It burned in the 40’s and all that remains is these stately walls, which make good photo ops. I think that would be testament enough to the futility of wealth in this life, but on one of the signs we discovered that the man who bought the land and started the building died before he saw it finished. His son carried on but stopped well short of the grand plans his father had in mind. And then it all burned within a generation. Still many of us don’t even leave ruins. You can see more pictures at:http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronmash/HaHaTonka

Fall

It is almost fall. In fact, I was looking back at pictures, and this time last year most of the leaves had already changed color. Multi-colored leaves are something I like about fall. Fall used to be my least favorite season, but since I cannot get out to the Colorado mountains to ski anymore (and see Brandon), winter has won that honor. Here are some things I do not like about Fall.

• It's too cold. Mid to high 80's is the perfect weather, and 90 is better than 70.


• Baseball season ends.


• I still have to mow even though my yard looks gross.


• The garage has to be cleaned out so we can get the van back inside.


• Leaves add to yard work.


• Jill starts wearing more clothes.


• School starts. It seems like I've always had a reason to dislike this. I wonder if it will ever stop?


• No more swimming. I didn't go swimming once this summer, but it's the principal of the the thing.


• No more being outside without my shirt. Again it's the principal.


• Hayrides are not as fun as cookouts.


• Everybody seems busier with less enjoyable activities.

My father many years ago pointed out one of my flaws. (In case you are wondering; no, this is not a completely uncommon occurrence.) What made this incident stand out, is that it blindsided me (unlike when he mentioned I have "chicken legs"). I had failed to see this flaw in myself, but he was right. Dad said that I won't try things that I can't be the best at.

Many of you are laughing saying; "Aaron, if that were true you wouldn't do anything." Well there is a small change that needs to be made there. I won't try something unless I think I can be at least as good as the majority of the people around me.

In case you are wondering why I am sharing this; it has just come up lately, and I'm trying to do better.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/umedia/20071005/cp.065c38ec7244315ec12961dc29661cf8

I don't know how long the above image will still be posted. I have read this one several times in the last week and I still laugh at it. The late eighties to early nineties was probably the golden age of comics (Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Bloom County) but right now we have new Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, and if you've ever worked in an office, Dilbert. I also regularly find Over the Hedge funny both in its drawing and odd take on suburbia.

A Little Me

Cannon is 15 months old. I have had nieces and a nephew, but he is the first kid I have been around enough to really influence. I know that this has been written about in thousands of books before, but it is still such a scary experience to see this kid do the things I do. For instance everything that has a handle and can be picked up is a light saber complete with sound effects. Thankfully he has his mother to be the positive influence. She’s the reason he will hand you his juice glass when he is done instead of just throwing it on the floor.

I finally finished reading Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man, and started a book that so far I highly recommend. It’s called Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog). This is probably another case of me being the last to read a book that everyone I know already loves (I first read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I was 25). But if you haven’t read it and you have some form of electronic device that can display text you can get it for free here, or you can have it read to you here.

An update from last week I finished the Protrade challenge 27^th. I made it to as high as second with 4 days left in the challenge, but fell steadily from there.

I found www.songmeanings.net this week which has the potential to be a site with endless hours of amusement possibilities. Unfortunately, it is mostly used by people to state their opinion that a band is cool. Still if you can suffer through several pages of that kind of thing you can get some interesting insight into song lyrics. I thought I would enjoy looking up the more vague songs that always make you ask, “I wonder what the meant by that;” however, the most amusing ones are for songs that are the most straight forward. I still remember a group of us in high school explaining to Tiffany that yes that is what the song meant.

Discipline

I have been pondering the idea of discipline lately. I remember in high school trying all sorts of things to become disciplined. I would never miss evening devotions, and I would make all sorts of lists and charts of things to do each day, or once a week or month. Eventually these all went by the wayside.

Today I am disciplined in nothing. I really mean nothing. I don’t think you could even say I was habitual in anything (except maybe scratching my feet, but that is new). (Oh and if Chris is reading this, I don’t even regularly rub my eyes anymore.) I look at my life: I have never been fired from a job; I have a decent house, a fantastic wife, and an almost perfect kid. Do I need to be disciplined?

Well, I think I do. I think that I have missed opportunities because I was not prepared for them. These are too numerous and varied for me to list tonight, but if you are reading this you can probably imagine some things that could have gone differently if you’d undergone a certain amount of preparation. I wouldn’t even be worried about these things, if it wasn’t for that aforementioned almost perfect kid. He is already picking up too much stuff from me. I don’t want him to have the same haphazard (which I would have sworn was spelled half-hazard) approach to life.

So as a step in the right direction I am going to begin some acts of discipline. One of them is regularly updating this blog. Every Thursday night. So when you check back in two months and see two entries after this one, you can smile, shake your head, and say a little prayer for my son.

PS - Since I haven't posted for awhile I will add a couple of things I am way to into right now. The first is www.protrade.com which is a fantasy sports meets stock market thing that is totally geeky, but very fun. And I want to show you this screen shot which shows me in 5th place on one of the challenges:

Granted There are 6 days 2 hours left in this 7 day challenge, but this is the highest I've ever been. If you decide to check out Protrade tell them aaronmash referred you. More bucks for me.

Also, anything to do with the Microsoft Zune, which I am getting. In November. I won it okay, and they won't ship it until then, and yes I'm getting a little bit antsy. If you're bored and have like 79 hours on your hands you can get one too at club.live.com

A Reason to buy your name.

Here's a little tip. If it is available, go buy your name as a domain (which ryhmes, incidentally). Otherwise you might have something like this out there: http://www.aaronash.com I am horrified that some previous acquaintance of mine, will look me up and think this is my web page. I think I would be happier if it was porno, at least them people who know me would not think it was mine.

I know I have put a lot of useless, uninteresting stuff on the web, but at least I didn't pay a domain fee to do it. Now, I know I should have.

It would have been interesting

I was cleaning out my PDA last night and I cam accross the following memo file:
Blog About

• non-theology that can support common values.
• What movies are worse than others? (I think I meant bad for the soul)
  
• Wind energy. What effect does it have on the environment?
• Community, is it the answer to selfishness?
• What would have happened if only Eve would have eaten the apple?
• Gary Allen
• Too much of my faith is vocabulary.
• Life lessons for Cannon: You don't get everything you want.

Wouldn't that have been fun. By the way if anyone has any idea what I was going to write about Gary Allen, I would love to hear it because I haven't the foggiest.

Easter Play

Did Jesus have an affinity for the temple? I ask this question after seeing Jim Purtle doing an excellent job portraying Jesus in our church's Easter drama. There is a scene where Jesus clears the temple. From our angle it appears that Jesus stands staring up at the temple after he has rebuked the money changers. (Noticeably absent from the scene was a whip, though; I like to imagine they tried it, but it didn’t go well in rehearsal.) Anyway, this scene got me thinking about the relationship of Jesus to the temple.

I have tended to be one who downplays the sacredness of earthy things. I don’t care much for the idea of relics. I have always thought, “no running in the sanctuary” was a silly rule. I no longer even get misty when someone plays “Proud to be an American.” And usually I think I am just agreeing with Jesus. He was God. He had no home here, roaming around the countryside with his disciples. He continually told people to keep their eyes on heavenly things and showed the silliness of being tied to this earth.

But twice we hear Jesus refer to the temple as his Father’s house (or the place where his Father is). I began to wonder if there was more to it than I have seen before. If Jesus was God and was with God from the beginning, than he was there when the first temple was built. He knew the sacrifice, and the patience that went into that place. He knew all it stood for and all its history. He knew every person who gave up some time or talent to build the first one. And he knew the scattered people who would come back generations later and rebuild it. Further, he knew the stone and earth that were used to make the temple came from the ground he created. And that thousands of years before he had set aside that ground as the place to build this house. I think the earth, the church, and the people around it would take on a whole new sacred meaning if we could see it as he does.

Anyway, good job, Jim.

More Snow

Okay,

It's April and it's snowing again. I was looking for people who had updated their blog, and noticed that my last two blogs were about snow. I thought I would keep the streak alive. If any of it sticks, I'll have pictures later.