Hilarious

Clown for Kicks (Mendota Heights)
Date: 2009-08-28, 11:12AM CDT
Reply to: sale-hqu43-1346837248@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

I am looking for someone to dress up like a Clown and hang out with me. I would cook you diner - or we could BBQ something. I'm interested in making my neighbor lady wonder. I have already had a man in a panda costume last month - and also had a heard of sheep come in for the day to cut the grass. (sheep do a good job by the way). A clown would be something.
Maybe you could bring some balloons - or make balloon animals to hang in my tree. I'd like to have this done some evening between 6pm and dark. The longer you can stay the better (like if you could stay for the whole 3 hours). Do you have any tricks you could do?
Like I said - I could cook diner and get you drunk - I'd even be willing to pay your cab fare to and from. I don't have much to offer - and my neighbor lady is driving me nuts - so I want to drive her nuts. If you had a Mime friend - it would be cool to see you two chase each other around the yard or do relay races while I time you.

Let me know your thoughts - open to Men and Women Clowns.

* Location: Mendota Heights
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

LINK

Not bad...

Oooh, excuse me.

This is pretty cool. Click for the pics.

Finally, A Use for Twitter
Sean informed me a few days ago that he had been following "The Real Shaq" on twitter.

"You realize that 'The Real Shaq' is probably a 5'4 White, 14 year old emo kid who's getting his jolly's from the attention, right?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I think it's really him"

Today Sean and I were discussing rumored trade situations over IM, and the possibility of Shaq being traded to Cleveland.

"Well, I just got a twitter from The Real Shaq, and he's at 5 & Diner right now," Sean informed me.

"Let's go then" I said, assuming that I'd finally put this "Real Shaq" crap to rest.

Twenty minutes later we were pulling up to the restaurant and looking for the big black truck that he's rumored to drive around town. "Maybe that's it" Sean said, pointing at an older, but nice Van and laughing. As we pulled up I saw the Superman symbol on the grill.

Maybe that is it?

We went in, and to my surprise the MDE(Most Dominant Ever) was sitting in the corner booth by himself. We gave the man a nod and "Hey" as we walked to our table and were soon whispering back and forth like 12 year old girls at the 7th grade dance.

"You go talk to him" I said, while tugging nervously on my dress.
"No, you go talk to him" Sean replied while flipping his hair.

We placed our order, and spent 10 minutes trying to work up the sack to go say something.

"Should I tell him I'm glad he's sticking around?"
"Go tell him you're his twitter buddy"
"Should I ask for a picture?"

Given another 2-3 years, I'm sure we would have worked up the nerve to go talk to him, but before that could happen Sean's iPhone buzzed with a "tweet" from Shaq.

I feel twitterers around me, r there any twitterers in 5 n diner wit me, say somethin


"Hey" Sean said, with a slight bit of confidence.

Returning to our hushed whispers I asked Sean, "Should we go talk to him now?"
"I don't know, should we?"

"Yes, you should" a very deep voice entered our conversation from 2 booths over.

We quickly hopped up and rushed over like like two eight year olds who had just heard the ice cream truck pass by.

"I know it's dorky man, but can I get a pic with you?" I asked, slightly intimidated.

"Of course" he said, "Pull up a seat" The behemoth slid over and patted the booth next to him. As I pulled out my phone to take a picture he snatched it out of my hand and inspected it.

"What's this got? Windows Mobile?"
"Um... yeah"

He gave it the once over before handing it back and showing off his Google Phone. We talked for a bit, and snapped a photo for both Sean and me before shaking hands and returning to our table. I almost got the feeling he wanted us to hang out, but we didn't really want to push our luck.

"Make sure you put that on your web page" he said as we walked away.

After he'd left, our young waiter came over. We asked if Shaq had actually eaten anything since his table was empty when we'd gone over.

"He ordered like 20 dollars worth of food" the kid stammered out, obviously thrilled to be talking about it, "And he left me a 160 dollar tip. Then he asked for a Sprite and gave me forty bucks for it."

We got back to the office, and saw that Shaq's last twitter was basically calling us a bunch of panzies:

To all twitterers , if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect



Not to be outdone "The Real Nash" wrote:

Diesel, 5 n diner has great chili and milkshakes but i know you're on a diet so you had a salad!!

New Dog!






We took the plunge and adopted a new dog from the Animal Humane Society. We named her Nelli in memory of my Grandpa Ron Vannelli who passed away last week after a tough few years fighting corticobasal degeneration, a neurological disorder similar to Parkinson's. The wake and funeral were very touching talking to a ton of family and friends and hearing some great old stories. Afterwards Gabe's by the Park hosted a closed memorial and we filled the entire place. More rembrances, a bunch of old timers down to his newest great grandchildren. We had some laughs, a few beers and some good pasta. Just like he would have wanted.

As I said we met Nelli at the Golden Valley Animal Humane Society which is great facility. It's a huge complex that cares for a ton of animals and helped make the adoption process easy with some great volunteers. She's a two year old pit bull found as a stray. She had just weaned puppies and we fear she may have been tossed aside after the puppies but we don't really know. She has a great temperment and just loves to cuddle so we did some research, (more here, here and here)called the insurance guy (did you know some home owners insurances will drop people for owning pit bulls?)and picked her up the next day. She has been really good despite the cold weather which is tough with her short coat. Only one accident, and no chewing, barking or any aggressive behavior. She has made friends with just about everyone who has come over, including the pizza girl and a NARAL campaigner plus the few dogs we've met at Petco and on walks.

A couple of interesting stories lately, thought I'd link to them rather than nothing. I'm horribly unqualified to give an opinion on the Economic Downturn TM, but I think this article is pretty interesting and sets out clearly alot of ideas that I would like to think I would have gotten to with some time, research, ambition, etc.

Why haven't I heard Bill James take on the BCS before? Seems like he would be an authority and he cuts right through it here.

Nicole accidently sent LinkedIn invites to everybody in her address book the other day so I signed up. It's basically just a facebook for your career and it's got some interesting stuff in there so I'll might end up using it. Turns out I know a decent amount of people in there with a few quick searches. Anyways, that's not the interesting part, what led me to post on this was the acute occurance of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. I had never heard of LinkedIn and I surf the internet all day at work and I'm fairly plugged into whats going on even if I'm not particpating. For example, I've heard of Twitter a while back, I never signed up or used it or anything but I was aware of it's existence. Not with LinkedIn. Anyways an hour after Nicole sends me the link I see a deadspin commentator mention it. Next I see another article mentioning it, and then I click on the NY times story about the top ten sites for IT pros in '09 and number 1 is, you guessed it, LinkedIn. Hilariously when I click on the "share" button next to the article it offers options to, well, share the story the first option is through LinkedIn. I give up.

Some new local music caught my ear tonight. Although I am loathe to visit a myspace page, this was the easiest way to link to the song. Check it out: Hyder Ali w/ Paper Dolls