All posts by Dale Connelly

Uncategorized

1,000 Bottles of Beer

82 Comments

This is post number 1,000 on Trail Baboon, all written by me or as guest entries by various baboons.

I’m exhausted, and proud. The total overall number is a convenient landmark because all I have to do is count the guest posts to know that TB is an amazing 16.4% reader-written.

beerwall

That’s better than the New York Times, by far.

It didn’t seem very long ago that we observed reaching the landmark of post number 500. That was an achievement, but this is better. I would almost say it’s exactly twice as good.

And so through stubbornness, determination, or simply as a result of habitual behavior and lacking the creativity to do anything different, we have moved into 4-digit territory, post-wise. And one of the things that sets blogging apart from books or a pile of paper newspapers is that all the writing we’ve done remains online for people to stumble across as if it had just appeared – fresh and new to each set of eyes that beholds it for the first time as long as they don’t look at the date or read any of the obsolete references included in the text.

That’s a form of immortality, isn’t it? Or longevity, at least?

And taken together, one could argue that we’ve collaborated to write a very long book that is “scattered and unfocused in subject and style, featuring a variety of occasionally compelling and sometimes incomplete characters drawn with varying degrees of skill.”

I put that line in quotes because I’m pretty sure someone’s actual book has been reviewed that way.

If you measure success in terms of readership, as opposed to simply counting raw numbers of posts, you would have to say Trail Baboon is consistent but certainly not growing.
Here’s a screen shot of our monthly readership statistics since January, 2011. We appear to get between 60 and 90 visitors a day, with each reader refreshing the page 4 to 7 times.
That adds up and it starts to look like a lot when you view it on a monthly basis, but in truth our community is rather small. But loyal!

Remarkably, our total numbers for the month of July 2011 and July 2013 were almost exactly the same though two years apart – 13,096 vs. 13,094.

Screen Shot 2013-08-03 at 8.47.16 AM

At any rate, congratulations, Baboons. Our achievement puts me in mind of a classic anthem sung by high-achievers throughout time:

One Thousand Bottles of Beer On The Wall,
One Thousand Bottles of Beer!
Take One Down, Pass it Around.
Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on The Wall.

Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,
Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer!
Take one down …

How do you pace yourself to reach a distant goal?

Uncategorized

A Sense of Achievement

34 Comments

Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing all the water surface area in the State of Minnesota.

beechly-speech

Greetings Constituents!

As your elected Representative, I wanted to take a moment before my Summer Break begins to thank each one of you for the calls you’ve made and the mail you’ve ee’d about the work of our 113th Congress! I agree with all of you on everything you said, and every single concern you expressed is my number one priority! And I know that many of my colleagues in the House feel exactly the same way about all their constituents too.

In the end, politics is pretty simple. We just want to be loved. And how do you show someone you love them? You listen, and do what you’re told, of course!

I’m not using that as an excuse, but it does help explain why we in Congress are currently having a hard time getting things done. Face it – you’re confusing!

I’m not saying it’s your fault, because that would get me in even more trouble. But maybe you should look at this in a different way. Right now, with multi-tasking being All The Rage, we have to ask ourselves if we in Congress are setting a good example for the busy people of this great nation.

So many Americans are trying to squeeze more productivity out of each and every minute, you can’t blame them for feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated! There is simply too much to do, and no one is speaking against the urge to do even more. Why? Because no one has that kind of time! And as long as productivity stays high, there’s no reason for employers to even consider hiring the laid-off millions who are exhausting themselves daily in a fruitless search for work.

That’s where we, your elected Representatives, come to the rescue.

As leaders, our task right now is to lead the American workforce towards acceptance of a bigger and better standard of idleness. We are aggressively doing nothing in excellent style while eating great food and wearing nice clothes. And we’re doing it for an unselfish reason – to show you what real recreational non-productivity looks like. When I’m home in my district, I model this by fishing all day. Here in Washington, I have to show it by talking endlessly about nothing in particular and reaching no compromises of any kind. It’s like fishing, but without the catch. I just release, constantly.

Only by doing this can I make it safe for you to begin to relax and to stop multi-tasking. Because no matter how lazy and worthless you become, you can be certain that your existence is still not as pointless as that of your Congressman.

So the next time some sourpuss points out that the House has accomplished practically nothing this session, I hope you’ll do what I would do – respond with a smile, a nod, a word of gratitude, and a nap.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

How productive are you?

Uncategorized

Lousy Little Leaker

35 Comments

Although I never quite made it to the Bradley Manning level, I’ve been a leaker most of my life for all the wrong reasons. It’s not that I believe in truth or justice or transparency – I just want a little attention. That’s why, one night at the dinner table when I was eleven years old, I cagily revealed to my older brother that he was going to find a Matchbox Car in his birthday haul the next day, but I was not going to tell him which one in the set he was going to receive.

Jaguar

This, I thought, would give me supreme power over him.

Naturally, my mother was outraged that I had betrayed her confidence. I was sent to my room immediately, forced to skip desert.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand the outrage. We each had accumulated a ton of the tiny metal cars, so getting another one was not that big a deal. Which model though? That was the key (as any collector would understand), and I was keeping that significant detail to myself. He would be tormented to have to spend the night knowing there was a new vehicle in his stable and wondering which one it was, praying and hoping it would be the Jaguar XKE when I knew full well it was the Ford Galaxie Police Cruiser. Not only would he spend the night in agony, his morning would be poisoned by disappointment.

Police_cruiser

No actual harm done. What’s the problem?

But in my mother’s mind, I had spoiled her surprise, and I played Edward Snowden to her Lindsey Graham. If she’d had access to the worst gateway lounge in a Russian airport, she would have marooned me there forever, or at least until I apologized to everyone in our family minus the dog.

Which was odd, considering that a few months later the dog was the one who would eventually wind up with that Matchbox Car firmly in his mouth – an unsatisfying substitute for a bone on a dreary, nothing-happening day.

When have you spilled a big secret?

Uncategorized

Needy Pet

32 Comments

Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden, still of Wendell Wilkie High School.

Hey Mr. C,

My summer has been really awful because I still don’t have a real job and all the rain we had in the spring led to a huge crop of mosquitoes AND weeds, and since I’m not doing anything during the day anyway my mom told me I have to go clean out the garden while she’s at work.

Bummer. I’m getting chewed to bits!

I complained to my dad but he said I should take the energy I put into whining and use it to do something productive, even if I don’t get paid for it. When I said “Like What?” he surprised me by saying “Like starting a blog!”

I didn’t even know he knew what a blog was! But since he said I should do it I’m starting to think maybe he’s got a point. I mean, how hard could it be? All you do is sit down and write down the thoughts that come into your head, right? I mean, it doesn’t have to be good or planned out in any way – it’s just a blog. But if you’re an undiscovered genius (like me) then maybe a gazillion people will start to read it and comment on it, and then you’ll become a superstar and a millionaire and you’ve got it made because as a blogger you don’t have to learn anything at all, ever! You just have to spend a little time in front of a screen every day being you … which is really the only thing I’m good at, anyway.

So the more I thought about it, the more excited I got about my own blog. In fact, I got so excited I actually went to look at YOUR blog, and wow, was I surprised!

Even though it takes no effort at all to write a blog, you’ve set it up so you do less than nothing! And Mr. Boozenporn said that less than nothing is an impossible value that one day he subbed for Ms. Pye in math class. He stuck to that story until Destiny Carmichael pointed out that there are negative numbers, which is something he forgot about.

Anyway, it’s so cool that you have other people writing it for you! And based on what I picked up from reading what Anna, Jim, tim, Renee, Jacque, Steve, Joanne, Sherrilee, Barbara, Edith and Donna were saying, you didn’t pay them a thing. Which is really too bad, because they’re good writers!

How do you get away with that? Isn’t it illegal? And isn’t it wrong to have your name up there on the masthead saying “… by Dale Connelly” when it really isn’t by you at all and you don’t even tell people who the real author is until the very first line after they open the post and look at it? I’d be kind of ashamed, and you know I’m hard to embarrass! I’m thinking that makes you kind of lazy, and unethical, which is really exciting because that’s just what my dad called me when I got caught cheating on homework last year, which just proves that blogging is perfect for me! I can’t wait to get started!

Just one question. Is there a limit on the number of exclamation points you get to use? I hope not!

Your pal,
Bubby

goldfish

I told Bubby there is nothing unethical about letting other people contribute posts for a blog, and there is also nothing to the popular myth that anybody can get rich and famous by writing one. Less than nothing, actually. I’m convinced the blog millionaires you read about are invented characters. Truth telling is not a very strong online value. In reality, having a blog is an obligation – like having a dog or a cat. You can get other people to take care of it every now and then, but regardless of who is doing the chores it needs attention every day. Or every other day, if it’s more like a hamster or a rat. And maybe every third day if it’s a goldfish. But if you’re less attentive than that, don’t be surprised if one day you go to write something for your blog and you find it floating upside down.

Write an apology to a pet you neglected.

The Baboon Congress

Christmas Newsletter

54 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Donna.

belated-cat-humor-christmas-ecard-lg

July 17, 2103

Greetings Family and Friends,

School starts up again in less than a month so I decided now would be a good time to send out my (not a typo) Christmas cards. And because it’s been over ten years since I’ve sent cards, I’ve committed to a newsletter. And feeling like a fish out of water – which in my experience feels just as slippery as when it’s in the water – I’m following the advice from an online site called, Ten Tips For Writing a Holiday Newsletter, written by somebody named Richard, whose last name I can’t remember. So let’s get started!

1. Prepare your audience to be bored. No matter how hard I try, this letter will likely be a bit tedious and tiresome. However, the nap you take while reading it will improve your brain function, disposition and personality. Science says so.

2. Consider your readers. The conversation should include things you’d talk about if they were right there with you at your kitchen table. Since I don’t have a kitchen table, we’d be sitting on the floor amid the dust bunnies, chatting about whatever comes to mind, picking the occasional cat hair off our tongues.

3. Invite your children to contribute to the writing. I did, and they declined. All three of them.

4. Enjoy the process; don’t act like writing the letter is a duty or a chore. I’m here to tell you I’m having a ball! Anything to put off running the vacuum!

5. Be real. Mention setbacks as well as achievements. Well, let’s see …

Achievement: I joined a gym to qualify for reduced insurance premiums. Setback: I have to exercise to get the reduction. Achievement: I became a deacon at my church, which involves serving communion. Setback: Sometimes I have to go to church.

Achievement: After 35 years, next year I will retire from teaching. Setback: Yeah – I’m that old.

6. Avoid boasting. Indeed it can get irksome when people exaggerate about how talented, smart, successful, well traveled, and well groomed their cats are.

7. Don’t embarrass anybody. I remember our last family newsletter said something about middle child’s (then teenager) ever-changing hair color, and she did NOT see the humor. These days she sticks with her own lovely natural dark blonde. Granted, the upper body tattoos she acquired during college detract from the loveliness but that’s neither here nor there.

8. & 9. Read the newsletter aloud and proofread. I was as surprised as you are, dear Family and Friends, for the homework assignment. Please complete and turn it in by Monday. Apparently Richard So & So believes in graduation requirements.

10. Keep it short – one page or less. Leave enough space at the bottom for a brief handwritten personal note and/or a handwritten personal signature. I craftily included both elements in my closing. See below.

Until 2023,
IMG_0226

What do you do that is out of sync with the season?

The Baboon Congress

College Then, College Now

55 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Joanne in Big Lake

In the summer of 1979, I took a couple days off my factory job in Green Bay and ventured to Minneapolis with a friend of mine to register for classes – on paper – to start college at the University of MN that fall. When Welcome Week rolled around, my parents drove 6 hours with me and my stuff, unloaded the car, promptly turned around and made the lonely voyage home. I’m sure it was very difficult for them to leave me in a strange, big city on my own with nothing but trust and faith in me.

Fast forward a few years – I recently attended Orientation with my middle son, Ben, an extremely bright young man starting at the University of MN-Minneapolis this fall in the rigorous College of Science and Engineering. A full day and half of meetings and presentations all about the U, all the resources available, campus life, online registration, meeting with advisers, connecting with other students, etc. Going to college is now a family affair.

Parents of our generation consider it absolutely necessary to be with their child every step of the journey from choosing a college, registering for the best classes, getting the best professors, the best grades. It’s just the logical next step from being involved parents when we scheduled their play dates, registered for dance classes, attended their sports events, met with their teachers, drove them to all their necessary destinations and generally made sure they had a totally enriching and full childhood.

The U of MN has bent over backwards to help smooth the transition and identify resources for any struggle or challenge that comes up. The parent meetings at Orientation stressed how to cope with the student’s sudden coping with new life skills, handling their own schedule, making their appointments, making their own friends and dealing with triple the homework load without having the comfort of being at home. They even had psychologists on hand with advice for us on how to deal with the range of emotions everybody is feeling as the college student moves out, the homework demands of a Top Ten college, possible break-ups in relationships and being in a self-contained city of 50,000+ students. The U of MN even has it’s own police force – and gave a great presentation on the safety programs in place. From a parents’ perspective, it’s very comforting to know that my son won’t be just thrown in the deep end and expected to instantly swim. Yet there’s also enough slack to empower the students to get a chance to be on their own and make their own decisions.

Back in 1979, I was the quiet, shy, homebody least likely to leave. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the terror and the exhilaration of being on my own. I remember the pangs of sadness when I was homesick. My older outgoing sisters went out of state to college and were back in Green Bay within a year. But I finished and stayed. I look back and am still amazed that I did OK on my own here in Minneapolis.

When taking a risk, how much of a safety net do you need?

The Baboon Congress

My Brief Career as a Gardening Correspondent

42 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Jim.

I have only had one job where I was paid as a writer. Somehow, about 20 years ago, I got a call from a magazine that covers gardening asking me if I would like to be their regional gardening correspondent for zone 4. It could be that they remembered contacting me a couple of times regarding the collection of spinach seed that I was offering through the Seed Saver’s Exchange. I had done some unpaid articles that were published a few places and was pleased to have the opportunity.

veggies

I was familiar with the job because I was a regular reader of the magazine and had even used tips given by previous zone 4 correspondents. I went right to work providing the same kind of advice that I had received. Actually, if you look at what is published for gardening tips, it seem everyone is stealing from everyone else because they are all saying about the same thing.

There was very little editing of what I wrote and I got almost no feed back. Occasionally I got carried away and put in some of my own rather rambling thoughts on gardening. Things started to change. At first I was published in the magazine. Latter the regional correspondents were left out of the printed magazine and only published online. The editors were in the process of spiffing up their publication and they were moving away from the old approach where the advice from people like me was a regular feature. I think some of those rambling articles I wrote gave them a clue that I wasn’t a very polished writer. They still have regional correspondents in their online publication. I’m not one of them.

It was the magazine’s old folksy approach that appealed to me, but it isn’t surprising that they wanted to go to a more polished style to fit in with all the other glossy magazines on the market. I did run into a couple of people who read what I wrote and liked it, and I talked to one of the old editors who was let go when they changed their style and he thought the old way was better, too.

But he didn’t even recall that I had been a correspondent during the time that he was the editor.

When have you expected someone to remember you, but they didn’t?

Uncategorized

The Twinkie Conundrum

58 Comments

Just when you thought you had adjusted to life without Twinkies, they’re back!

ENTERTAINMENT FOOD FUN JUNK SWEET CYLINDRICAL ELONGATED BAKED GOOD KIDS

And what’s more, they no longer come with the simple sugar = pleasure / fat = punishment choice you had to make in the old days. Now each Twinkies-related decision will be a statement revealing your personal theory about management, bankruptcy, and the role of organized labor in today’s economy.

Hostess went out of business after a labor dispute with the people who made the snack cakes. It was a management decision to scuttle the company rather than give in to what corporate leaders saw as unreasonable demands by an organized workforce.

This brought out harsh criticism from union-bashers. One tweeting critic decried the fact that bakery workers who had been making the Twinkies had pensions. How sweet would a lavish retirement be, knowing you got there by pushing creme filling into spongy cake for 45 years?

But never fear that buying your next Twink will cushion the twilight years of an undeserving wastrel. After going through bankruptcy, the Hostess brands were sold to a new owner, and presto! The new company has no labor union to deal with and Twinkies are already tantalizing the snack-loving shoppers at Wal-Mart.

What will come of this? The whole snack cake ethos was about happiness – thus goofy names like Ho-Ho’s and Ding Dongs. Will you now have to cross a picket line to buy a Zinger?

And union members aren’t the only ones who are bound to be sore. What about the hoarders who spent recklessly to stockpile huge backlogs in advance of the Twinkie apocalypse? Is there still a chance for their dream of using packaged desserts as currency, or have they been viciously undercut? Or will it turn out that their Strategic Snack Cake Reserves will prove to be our only source of genuine, un-tarnished Twinkies, now and forever?

I’m afraid all the potent political and economic issues swirling around the new Twinkies will make it impossible for me to eat one without getting a stomachache. Unlike the old days, when I didn’t get a stomachache until I opened the fifth package.

What food are you unable to eat?

Uncategorized

Most Likely To Exceed

65 Comments

Today’s post comes from Wally, proprietor of Wally’s Intimida, home of the Sherpa – the SUV that’s so large, it has its own gravity.

The Car Is A Butte
The Car Is A Butte

This is a great day to buy a Sherpa from Wally’s Intimida! Did I say great? I meant PERFECT!

But then I say that about every day. Too bad some people just don’t get it. Most people, actually. But the day will come when you will feel sorry that you didn’t buy a Sherpa when it was possible.

This car is mammoth. It can be seen from space. Not only does the Sherpa have its own gravity – it leaves a giant footprint. Park the Sherpa outside your house and it will begin to re-shape the landscape by changing wind and weather patterns. Set the parking brake and leave it for a million years, and you’ll have a butte in your back yard – guaranteed.

But one thing the Sherpa can’t do is make the list of the Most Frequently Stolen Cars in America. That top honor goes to the Ford F-250 four-wheel-drive crew cab. The Chevrolet Silverado came in second. The top ten targets of theft were all large or Very large pickup trucks or SUVs.

So why didn’t the Sherpa make the list?

Simple.

Thieves don’t know they can steal it because it registers as part of the landscape. It exceeds their expectations of what a car can be, and they simply cannot imagine themselves behind the wheel of something so gigantic. They can’t understand that it even has a wheel – the car looks like foothills to the uneducated observer.

And this mind-numbing-through-size happens to miscreants who regularly steal Ford F-250s. That’s got to tell you something!

Today is the day to get your own Sherpa from Wally’s Intimida. Bring it home and leave it unlocked. The car simply is too awesome for the criminal mind to comprehend.

I’ll see You In The Showroom,
Wally

I suppose on one level, having your product become the car-most-stolen IS a sign of success, since covetousness is what automobile marketing is all about.

What item would you steal if that was the only way to get it?

Travel

A Walk Across Town

51 Comments

Whenever I want to break out of the rather familiar and predictable world I’ve constructed for myself, I visit Paul Salopek’s Out Of Eden Walk blog.

With the assistance of National Geographic, Salopek is on a mammoth journey – an ambitious 7 year walk from the Horn of Africa to Tierra del Fuego – tracing the path of our ancestors as they set out to explore the world on foot.

The most recent post uses digital mapping technology and video to chronicle a portion of the walk – traversing Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Ruined_Shoes

I used to fancy myself a world traveler. I imagined that I would see the world and feel at home everywhere, meeting and befriending remarkable people in exotic places. That was before I actually went anywhere and found out how uncomfortable travel can be for an introvert who is picky about food. Facing reality and acknowledging personal some limitations had the effect of shrinking my options.

Instead, I decided to ruin my footwear by puttering around the yard. My favorite shoes used to be gleaming white and spiffy, but pulling weeds, digging holes, picking up after the dog and mowing the lawn have given them a greenish-black tinge that could have been earned more quickly in some other, much more adventurous and tale-worthy way.

Alas, I will probably never make it to Jeddah. But following Salopek has given me something approximately like a real experience of being in a place. Of course it would be better to actually GO. But absent that, this will do.

What city would you like to walk across?