the tinyblog

At one time or another, I have heard any one of several bloggers who write about their personal life finally feel the crunch.

When anyone first starts their blog, not a goddamn person is reading. You can write about anything, no matter how incriminating, emotional, or involved with other people in your life. Then, at some subtle point, there's a change. Someone you know mentions casually that they didn't appreciate what you said in yesterday's post, and a cold chill runs through you.

Suddenly you realize that what you're writing is public, and that means that not just cool people in Australia can read your funny stories about your sexual exploits...your first grade teacher could technically type your name into a search engine and read the same funny story.

I remember when Meg had this experience, I remember when it happened to Shauna, and I remember when it happened to me.

I remember the moment it was no longer my little sacrosanct corner of the web to talk about whatever was affecting my life. Like any journalist (even a fluff-ass human interest journalist like me) I felt the responsibility of balancing truth with sensitivity to real people.

But goddamn, none of us ever had it as bad as Heather, who just got fired for Dooce.com, one of the best weblogs on the planet in my opinion.

What happened? Well, it all happened so fast...

14 days ago she posted a hilarious and self-effacing post about some people at her work. She didn't mention anyone by name, and, honestly...I didn't think it was that insulting.

12 days ago she posted mentioning that someone had sent an anonymous Email to every VP at her company, bringing her post to their awareness. (See the very bottom of the post.)

7 days ago she posted a funny post about serving quiche at a wedding, and then

Today she posted a post saying she got fired for her original post.

Just like that. It's funny cause I was just getting ready to do a post about her and how I can't read her blog in public for fear of looking like a hysterical fool.

Her blog is pretty, she puts so much into it, her writing is frequently insanely funny, and I think it's about to get a whole lot better cause...well, cause she's unemployed!

And Heather, honey...get a lawyer!

I think I'd like to do a follow-up to this post, so if you have any good stories about this, or a link to a post that illustrates this, please leave a comment or email me at danieltalsky@hotmail.com.

Posted by tiny daniel at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I think once a year it's worth running Rob's Amazing Poem Generator on the tinyblog. I'm convinced there's something eerily briliant about this tool. My three favorite poems it generated:

I

the doctor. just and now
I . have pretty sharp.
I saw
a couple of Buddha in January.
I saw it was
a
haircut, maybe.

II

the German
version of
their archives
that makes this will
be found. Update: I went over
to see a bad case of
her post she links
to remember who posted at
him. to
school, or haphazardly
posted something similar,
I could see
a pleasant surprise to the world. In flash! comic about
2am, and in your server, and it Hi
Rose. up? Let fly.

III

the image, but
not him to see the only remember
who posted something about the
Gummi Bears Theme Song for it
have been bosom ha! buddies lately.
She promptly posted. Notice that move
me * with paragraph after sitting by being forced to
Oh, and hit me
with a scan of buddha
Sakyamuni accompanied by
5am
I Asshole DogHead
Journal A painting I thought
mine were moved by it,
and in January. I somehow managed to the
laziest band name is basically about, debugging. It using CSS.

Last years effort was pretty funny.

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Did I mention I'm in a band?

We're called Lazy Boy and the Recliners, and we're the laziest band in the world. In fact, I've never actually met Lazy Boy himself because he's contractually required not to show up for band practice or gigs.

Currently I'm working on memorizing the German version of the Gummi Bears Theme Song for our debut performance.

A fellow bandmember, who's band name is Buster Lowballs, actually runs his own sweet little LiveJournal called fenzle, and in his latest post he describes a recent night of doing what our band does best: drinking and telling gruesome stories. You thought mine were gruesome? They're nothing compared to Beth's.

Oh, and in case you're wondering why he calls me knuckle in his post, it's because my band name is Lord Knuckle Esquire. Don't ask.

Posted by tiny daniel at 3:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I spent way too long tonight finally doing a little php mailform for my sidebar. It's like I somehow managed to forget, at one point or another everything I've ever learned about programming though. I re-remembered it all though, by being forced to remember everything I knew about debugging.

It looks pretty simple, but the email I get looks pretty sharp. I wish you could see it. What you can do though, is send an Email, and then 'view source' to see a couple of little confirmation HTML comments.

Anyway, put it to good use, and hit me with an Email...it's easier than ever before. Just fill in your favorite fields and let fly. You don't even have to leave the page.

If you like it, have PHP running on your server, and would like something similar, I can probably hook you up. Let me know.

Posted by tiny daniel at 3:51 AM | Permalink

It's rare to see excellent fiction (besides interactive fiction) use the 2nd person voice.

That's why it was a pleasant surprise to read Seattle Weekly's first place fiction winner tell a tale I identify with all too well. Like to hear it, here it go:

AT NIGHT, the Mail Annex is jammed with the same boredom and brutality as Dayshift, but you come in vulnerable after sitting by the swings in the park, or going to school, or toying with a plate of green curry chicken...

Posted by tiny daniel at 1:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Awhile back I saw a utility on someone's blog (god, if I could only remember who I would hunt through all of their archives) that was a link to a cool little tool that takes an image, and converts it to ASCII text. You could specify what characters you wanted (I want just 1's and 0's) and then it would make a pretty cool version of it using CSS.

I thought it was so cool at the time, but I also thought I would be able to find it and now I can't. I can find a utility that converts an image to an HTML table that looks exactly like the image, but not something that makes this cool HTML/ASCII approximation.

I thought of an application for it and I can't think of any other way to do it. Can anyone help me? I have hunted on google and it seems to be nowhere to be found.

Update: I only post something like this on the tinyblog when I'm totally desperate, and in this case, I'm glad I did, because I posted this post at about 2am, and by 5am I had an answer from Rogi who posted something about the amazing http://www.text-image.com on his blog back in January. I don't think his was the blog I originally saw it on. In fact, I don't think I've ever read the man's blog. This will be quickly remedied.

Posted by tiny daniel at 3:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you want to get a general sense of what Buddhism is basically about, but don't want to tax yourself with paragraph after paragraph of reading, take a look at a little introduction to the teachings of Buddha Sakyamuni accompanied by some pretty little drawings in this lovely flash comic about the basics of the Buddha's teachings. So nice, perfect for a lunch break at a stressful day.

Posted by tiny daniel at 2:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Someone told me the other day that they were moved by this post, and I read it and I was moved by it, too. Sometimes I look back on past posts and think "Who writes this stuff?" Is that weird?

Posted by tiny daniel at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rosebaby and I have been bosom (ha!) buddies lately. She noticed that in response to my last post about my Dad, I got a very unusual comment, wherein Shannon Kringen (aka Goddess Kring) left a picture of her breasts. Someone suggested it was a smooth subliminal suggestion on my part, but I explained the real story to Rosebaby and we had a funny little Email exchage about it, which she promptly posted.

Notice that in her post she links to a scan of a painting I did when I went over to her house on Valentine's Day. I'm so much more in the 'hanging out with friends' camp on Valentine's Day rather than the 'solitary liquor drinking' camp.

Also, Rosebaby is the only other member of the Sad Beer Webring (see the bottom of my sidebar). That's all.

P.S. Re: The painting. I know it looks like flowers, but it's called "oughtamagic wands".

Posted by tiny daniel at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Take him to the doctor."

"I'm not takin' him to the doctor, he's perfectly fine."

"He's got a bad case of the scrawn, take him to the doctor."

"He's just slender."

"You 'kin count every damn rib on that boy. Take him to the doctor."

"Ok, fine, I'll take him to the doctor."

"Good. Take him to the doctor while you're at it."

---

"Hi Dr. Malek."

"Hi Rose. What's up?"

"Is something wrong with my boy?"

"Looks like he needs a haircut, maybe."

"Dr. Malek, look at him. You can count his ribs."

"One, two, three...mmp, yes, they're all there."

"But..."

"He's fine. He could stand to drink more milk."

---

"What's your name?"

"David."

"How come you never leave the monkey bars?"

"I like the monkey bars."

"You kind of look like the monkey bars."

"My dad says I have a bad case of the scrawn."

"Do you kiss girls?"

"Sure."

"Kiss me?"

"Okay."

"You have pretty arms."

Posted by tiny daniel at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You know, the point of this whole thing was to talk about how my dad has influenced me in a positive way. We had a phone conversation and I told him something that had really influenced me, and he made a big fuss like I'd never told him such a thing before.

When I told him how selective his poor 60-year-old memory was, he asked me to write it down somewhere where he could always read it, and that's actually why I decided to blog about him.

You see, the whole "Anything is Possible" thing has a light side and a dark side I think. The dark side is that it's often used as a weapon against people who don't want to do what he's asking of them. People, being polite as modern people are trained to do, will say, "Oh, I can't do that."

He will point out repeatedly that they are using can't as an excuse, and not really seeing the situation in an innovative way that would allow them to do whatever it is that he wants. Granted, he also uses it to point out when people are holding themselves back from something they really want to do, and in his mind I know it's always used altruistically, but I've had it aimed at me too many times to believe he knows what the difference is.

I learned two things from this. One, is that he's usually right. If you're willing to put the energy and ingenuity into something, there's nothing that there's not a path to. Obstacles become stepping stones, and each one actually can propel you to a greater understanding of the situation, and a certain momentum that possibility thinking enables.

Second, I learned how to have some pretty solid boundaries, and why this can be beneficial. I learned that sometimes, lying and saying you "can't" do something that you simply don't want to do is sometimes more destructive than the "rudeness" that telling the truth entails.

One time he told me that to be able to "ask" someone to do something, you have to be willing to accept a yes or no answer. If you plan to punish someone for refusing, then you should really present it as a command, which is what it is. I never forgot that.

I've discovered that when I find myself saying I "can't" do something, that there's almost always fear of actually doing it, and some kind of message in that fear.

I have some serious differences in my philosophy as my dad. He thinks that "anything is possible" can just happen in this spontaneous playful way that doesn't seem like work because you're using your basic energy to naturally accomplish your highest goals. He seems to have this idea that you can just magically attract sponsors...that, in fact, there are thousands of people just waiting to give you what you want and make your dreams a reality if only you ask.

In a way I believe that's what enlightenment is like. When you free that energy and you can just live life like a kind of magical illusion, but I think that married to that idea is the idea of having no attachment to the outcome of your freeform labors.

When you want a certain thing to happen you have to put time and energy into it. You have to make it happen from the ground up with your own sweat equity. It is your own passion that will inspire others to help you. There are millions of people with their hands out, palms up, asking for support, but it is those who look like their willing to work harder than anyone for it who attract support from others. You have to try to do it all by yourself, and you can't have any hope that others will help you, even as you ask. Then they will.

As limited beings, we only have a somewhat narrow focus. We may know it is our potential to be unlimited, but until we are, we just have to tools that we have, and it is our delight and responsibility to use our strengths and weaknesses with as much diligence as we can, not spewing out our energy in all directions.

I honestly believe that if my dad could choose one project and move diligently towards it he could accomplish anything. I fear though, that that project encompasses every project he has ever thought of, and that he just doesn't know how to take a bite sized chunk.

He's lived on the planet for 60 years now, and on the streets of Chicago for about four. It's a city he knows and loves, and I see him sometimes in my mind, wandering it's streets like a hungry ghost, searching in the eye of each stranger at the Starbucks counter for the unlimited possibilities that he can't seem to find in himself.

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

One day I was making a mix tape for a friend at work, and I had just left the stereo running. I was about to leave for the evening, and had considered mentioning it to my dad not to touch the stereo, but decided he probably wouldn't anyway.

Sure enough though, when I got back later, it had been turned off. I really gave him hell about it...like how dare he touch my electronic equipment and all. In retrospect I realize what a complete bastard I was, and finally he got sick of it and said to me, "You're getting mad at me over the fucking hi-fi? The hi-fi?"

I was so amused that he was calling my 'boom-box' a 'hi-fi' that I was instantly less mad. In fact, I could hardly keep from laughing everytime he said 'hi-fi'.

One time I remember I got fed up with all the piles (I think they were encroaching on my little spot of floor). I asked him if he couldn't perhaps clip the articles and file them in some way. I pointed out how difficult it made it to live in the apartment, especially for me who had no home base there. He agreed that this was a good idea and that he had, in fact, been meaning to do so, but never got around to it.

Amazing, I thought, my superior logic and spatial skills had finally gotten through to him! Things were gonna change right there for us. Space in the apartment...who knew what could be next.

I left in the morning as he was starting on a juicy pile of newspapers about a foot high. I left satisfied as he picked up one paper and looked for the marked article. About 8 hours or so I returned home, hoping to see a profound improvement in the apartment.

There he was, sitting in the exact same place he was when I left, working on the exact same pile, with a "done" stack of about 4 inches and a "discarded" stack of about 2 inches. He had a newspaper in his hand and he was chuckling brightly about the newest in the wealth of articles he had just re-discovered supporting his theory that, "Anything is possible."

I sighed. Maybe he remembers differently but I don't even think I had the heart to give him much of a hard time over it.

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A good friend called me from Illinois the other day. She just moved there with her new husband.

"Happy Valentine's Day," I said, "did Nathan get you something?"

A pause, "No, we agreed not to do anything for Valentine's Day."

"WHAT?! And he believed you? You got him something though, right?"

"Well, I got him a card."

"Of COURSE you did. Oh my God, this marriage is not going to work."

Men, let me just break it down for you. I know that it's a made-up Hallmark holiday, but it's a symbol. There's absolutely no agreement that will keep your girlfriend from having her little girl feelings hurt if you don't get her a fucking Valentine's Day/ Christmas/ Birthday/ Martin Luther King Jr. Day present.

There's still a few hours left. If you didn't get your girlfriend a Valentine's Day present then get up off your uneducated ass and go get at least a card you pathetic moron! Didn't your momma teach you better than that?

Posted by tiny daniel at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

At about 19 I decided I didn't want to live under my mom's unreasonable rules (like doing my own dishes) anymore, and I decided to ask my dad if I could go live with him in Chicago where everything was cool. Also I had no car, and I had already gotten fired from every crappy fast food job within walking distance (Beef-a-Roo, Dairy Queen, K-Mart).

The reality was that my dad was living in his mom's rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment on Barry and Belmont. But hey, I was only going to live there for a couple of months until I could save up enough cash to get my own place in the big city. He said he'd love to have me, so one fine afternoon I showed up on his front step with my bags and my queen sized futon.

I noticed something strange was going on as he began to stash my things in the hall closet hastily. It occurred to me that he hadn't mentioned to my grandma, Bubby Glore (bubby is yiddish for grandma, and Gloria was her real name) that I was planning on an extended stay. I suppose she figured it out soon enough.

One of the first things I noticed were the stacks of newspapers, books, magazines, notebooks, and bags of same that covered every available square inch of floor, table, counter, and horizontal space in the entire apartment. When my dad finds something interesting in a newspaper, he marks the interesting article, and then saves the entire newspaper. Plus, he is a prolific collector of books like Ostrander's Superlearning, Zig Ziglar's See You at the Top, Nathan Pritikin's Live Longer Now, Richard Nelson Bolles' What Color is Your Parachute and Napoleon Hill's perennial classic Think and Grow Rich.

Bubby had the only bedroom, and slept on a king sized bed that filled up most of the room. My dad slept on the couch in the living room, and I slept in a 3' x 8' area graciously cleared of the piles. There I was...in Chicago.

I never realized how real the generation gap really was until I got a chance to get to know my dad. We both liked movies, and we both liked coffee shops, but that was about where the similarities ended. We didn't even like the same kinds of coffee shops. I couldn't understand how he could drink coffee at Starbucks, but it turns out that the Clark and Diversey Starbucks was quite a mecca for big business movers and shakers. My dad loved to sit all afternoon in a Starbucks putting things in notebooks like this:

10 people each year x
10 of their friends x
10 of their friends x
$1000/ea. lifetime membership =
$1,000,000/year

For a non-made-up example read his article, What Is The Reality of Self-Employment.

I don't know how he does it, but he gets people in the Starbucks all fired up and gets them to invest in his newest thing, and buy lifetime memberships sometimes. Then he lives on the money while he tries to line up more people to pay for what he promised the first person. Eventually it crumbles. Two months later I get a phone call, "I've got something cooking. It's big. It's really big."

This was the first time I got to see it first hand. It was also the first time I got to truly experience the generation gap. I mean, I always knew he said things like, "hey, look at that attractive gal" and "allll-right!". I was just used to my mom, who had had 19 years of practice in trying to be at least slightly cool. My dad was still totally into Barbara Streisand. One time he hitchhiked to New York in the 1960's just to see her. My dad had no idea of what cool even meant in 1992. I don't think he even cared. It did make it a little hard to relate to him.

Posted by tiny daniel at 4:42 AM | Permalink

As usual, my mom has an illuminating version of events I only barely remember:

It was corn stalks in the field, the source of corn syrup. You were very cute sitting in the middle of the field sucking on the stalks.

Also, the windmill was the well pump, no longer in use. It was a very tall black iron structure. One day, you were about two, you managed undetected to climb up most of the way and you were heading to the top. As you know, I do not like heights but there you were so I got up there as fast as I could and quietly so as not to alarm you. You and I made it to the top platform at about the same time and I locked my arm around your body. Then we both stopped and looked around. We could see the skyline of Chicago in the distance.

Although I did not choose to go up there and I was pretty scared, I did drink in the sight of the landscape and was glad for the experience. When we got down, I scolded you and you never went up there again.

The town was called Monee. It had a small main street with a diner. You had a little scam going and it took me quite a while to discover how you did it. Again, you were only two years old.

Dick and I would go to the diner once in a while. We would sit at a table and you would ask to sit at the counter until the food came. The waitress would call over, "Is it ok if he has a glass of orange juice?" I would nod yes. I would go over to collect you for dinner and some farmer had always bought you a glass of orange juice. Never pop or milk but a glass of orange juice. The two of you would be deep in conversation and the farmer (never the same one twice) would be laughing and apparently highly entertained. After this happened too often for it to be an accident or coincidence, I made sure to sit within earshot.

You sat at the counter swinging your little legs. You would greet your mark with some precocious statement and when the farmer responded, you chirped up with "My Mom says I can have a glass of orange juice". Of course, a glass of OJ was ordered and put on the guys tab. Pretty cool move. Dick and I laughed until our sides hurt.

Monee was truly a cool place, a restored farmhouse with a big yard and a vegetable garden and a barn with a rope to swing on high in the rafters. You only swung when someone was holding you. We were there less than a year and you and I moved in with Joni when we left. That was the last place we lived with Dick.

You entries are recalling memories good and bad and I will stay with the charming stories because this is your tale of your memories of your Dad, not a chronicle of events.

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So I must have been 12 or so when visitation started up again. Rockford is about 90 minutes away from Chicago. Sometimes he had a car, and sometimes he had money for the bus, or often he'd just hitchhike. Whatever it took to come hang out with us every other weekend.

When in Rockford we didn't have a lot of options, though. Especially if he didn't have a car, my mom would have to drive us to a place where we could basically hang out in the same place all day, which in Rockford means only one thing: Cherryvale Mall.

It was a pretty big mall, had two movie theaters, a bookstore or two, an arcade, and a few restaurants. Then of course there were the multitude of meaningless boutiques that were invisible to a 12 year old boy.

Did I mention my dad is a Chiropractor? He does this really cool Chiropractic technique called DNFT which is not the bone cracking kind. He just sort of pushes with the end of his thumb with a sudden gentle force, and breathes out his nose with a puff like a little king-fu move.

It was very important to him to do this...he felt like once every two weeks was hardly enough, so he would do his chropractic adjustments on the padded benches outside the food court.

To me and my pre-teen sister this was always the hight of potential humiliation. There was always the fear that someone from school would see us having our butt touched in public.

Dad didn't help. While we were trying to evade attention, he was usually trying to attract attention. Pretty girls especially who walked by he would sort of leer at and say emphatically, "You're next!"

This went on for years.

Posted by tiny daniel at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By my mom's estimate my dad probably owes her something in the neighborhood of $20,000 in back child support. When I've mentioned this to him he bristles at the very idea that he should have to pay child support, or gives a wounded look that he I haven't aknowledged him for the child support he has paid. He claims my mother told him when she left him that she would never ask him for child support. Oooooh-kay.

Now my sister and I are completely grown. I think once every six months or so my mom would start court proceedings again way back when, but my dad proved quite agile at legal machinations. A combination of not showing up in court, skillful pleadings to the judge, showing up with a sob story and a lawyer at the last moment, and having absolutely no income to speak of allowed him to defer the long arm of the law just about indefinately. I won't say he didn't pay any child support, but proportionately I don't think the final numbers would be very impressive.

It's not that he was just a malicious layabout...he works...in his own way. I don't think he's had a regular job where he was employed by someone in a very long time, and I don't know anymore if he's capable of such a thing. It makes me chuckle to think about it actually. Soon after he got hired he would be telling his boss how he could transform his business into something of much greater scope (anything is possible!) and sell lifetime memberships for...uhhh...car insurance.

Besides, it is a waste of time to work for an hourly wage when one is constantly on the cusp of putting together that big deal that will fill stadiums with people willing to pay for a lifetime membership to The Life Center. I know he believes that when he makes his millions he will lavish us (including my mom) with wealth that we could never imagine. I know it. He'd never admit he doubts it for a moment.

My mom remarried a year or so after she left my dad, and then a year or so after that, they moved to another city...Rockford, where I grew up. From what I gather, my mom and new step-dad didn't leave a forwarding address, and I didn't hear from my dad for what I think was a few years.

I remember I asked one day what ever happed to the ol' man, and I think my mom said that she didn't know how to get ahold of him. I remember being gripped by despair that I had somehow lost touch of someone so important, and faced the stark possibility of never seeing him again. (I was maybe...seven?)

"Well, maybe we'll be driving to Chicago one day and we'll pass him on the street!" I said, but I knew the chances were pretty slim. God, I remember how utterly hopeless I felt about it.

Well I needn't have worried. He must have eventually went to the courts with some cash, because one day my mom told us that the visitation was to begin. Much of this visitation happened at good old Cherryvale Mall.

to be continued...

Posted by tiny daniel at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I actually remember me and my Dad and my mom all living together as one happy family. I remember us living in a farm house in Monee, IL. I remember swinging on a rope swing in the barn.

I also remember my dad, with a full beard and mustache, sitting on the couch. It's a clear picture, but there's not much more.

I remember the night of that memory, my parents told me to brush my teeth. I went upstairs and instead just ate a little of the toothpaste. I think I even remember that they smelled my breath to make sure. Boy, did I think I was clever.

My mom tells me that there was sugar cane on that farm, and that she found me one day sucking on a piece of sugar cane. I think there was a windmill there that I tried to climb. I don't even remember how old I was. If my mom corrects this story I will be sure to post it.

Anyway, I remember having a very warm feeling about my dad then, and thinking about his bearded face really makes me feel good.

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Of course, my mom read my first "Dad" post and came up with a rockin' guest entry.

She had just been to a family function:

Every time I was introduced to someone as the ex-wife of Dick, someone would raise their eyebrows and/or gasp. Then they would recover quickly and adopt a more socially correct attitude of gladtomeetcha, etc. Many people wonder how, why and so forth. Since Dick is your theme this week, I thought I would put the matter to rest as a possible guest entry.

A girlfriend of mine was getting married. She was on a budget so she asked if I would attend her wedding with another friend of hers, a newly graduated Chiropractor. I was eighteen all of a week and was fully ready for this sophistication. The new mysterious older man (24) called to take me out so we could get aquainted before the big event. He came to pick me up and he had a moustache! Wow, clearly a MAN where I had dated only boys before. I was definitely out of my league.

Before the month was up, I was deflowered; two months later I moved to my own apartment and he was a frequent guest. He gave me my first drink, he ordered me my first lobster dinner. He was knowledgeable about current events and world affairs. He had a brand new office, with patients. He had a brand new car and later taught me to drive. He was an excellent driving instructor. He encouraged me to advance in my career and helped me to believe in myself. He had an incredible vocabulary and taught me to love words and their nuances, a trait that I have tried to pass on to his children. He taught me to love learning and to consider possibilities beyond the immediately obvious. He included me in his somewhat noisy family, people that I continue to love and cherish to this day.

So, what went wrong? Alas, theory does not put food on the table and I simply tired of taking care of everyone including a well educated, intelligent, fully grown man.

There is the short version. If you have any questions of what he was like then, let me know.

Posted by tiny daniel at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My Dad. His Email signature line reads "anything is possible!" and he really believes it.

My blood father lives on the streets of Chicago, and every month or so he calls me excitedly to tell me about his new project.

"I've got a big project in the works...I'm putting together a deal to buy a cafe/ a bookstore/ a health club/ a movie theater, and I'm going to expand it to make it an internet cafe/ alternative health mall/ natural foods store. It only costs $100,000 and I'm going to sell lifetime memberships for $2,000. All I have to do is get 50 people...just 50 people and the place is paid for free and clear. Isn't that exciting?"

I want to support him because he's so excited every time, but I just get weary after a while. "That's great dad," I manage to say sometimes, "only 50 people eh?"

It's been like this for years.

I set up a website for him at thewowcenter.com. It is a work in progress, of course. By all means, read some. You will undoubtedly see some really spot-on concepts, marked by perhaps some disorganized thinking.

He is a fervent man, and I've seen him work the coffee shops of Chicago with a supreme skill, talking excitedly about his newest project, pointing to his diagrams, and selling photocopied self-published copies of his book.

I've had a hard time thinking about how to write about him in the tinyblog...you know, honestly and respectfully. I said something last night about the ways he's influenced me, and he said, "Wow! You've never told me that before." (patently untrue) And then he requested that I write down how he's influenced me, so there would be a more permanent record, not subject to the whims of memory.

So I will endeavor to say in the next few days how my dad has influenced me, and perhaps tell a few good stories about my ol' man, heretofore hardly mentioned in the pages of the tinyblog.

Posted by tiny daniel at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A mysterious reader pointed out that momo, or more fully, "chisana momo" means fuzzy peach in Japanese! Who knew?

So now, everyone who's been calling me "hairy dumpling" can call me "hairy peach dumpling". Wow. That sounds disgusting.

My mysterious reader was kind enough to include a .gif of the japanese characters for chisana momo:

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Okay, the final track listing for the mix for the 4-year old:

1: The lion sleeps tonight
2: My friend cubilas - Badly Drawn Boy
3: Instanbul (not Constantinople) - They Might be Giants
4: Peggie Sue - Buddy Holly
5: Interlude - Badly Drawn Boy
6: Lowrider - War
7: Ain't no sunshine - Bill Withers
8: This song - Badly Drawn Boy
9: Cornflake girl - Tori Amos
10: Particle man - They Might Be Giants
11: The name game - Shirley Ellis
12: Be my baby - The Ronettes
13: Lean on me - Bill Withers
14: Ob la di ob la da - The Beatles
15: New York City - They Might Be Giants
16: Poppa oom mow mow - The Rivingtons
17: Don't let's start - They Might Be Giants
18: Kerplunk by candlelight - Badly Drawn Boy
19: In California - Neko Case
20: Release - Pearl Jam
21: Stay awhile - Edie Brickell
22: Penny lane - The Beatles

It's called the zazzy colors album, cause that's his word for reds and yellows and oranges. "It's YAY zazzy," he says.

Posted by tiny daniel at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)