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Rotating Pineapple

This is a note-a-day blog where people give me titles and I write about them. It's become an off and on project. The title comes from an expression we had as kids: "Up your winkie with a rotating pineapple."

Oct. 29: Women's shoes speak a language

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October 31, 2014

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Dec. 6: Embroidery

December 06, 2025

Chuck Klosterman is one of my comfort writers. I have read a few of his books but two of them have stuck with me. I WEAR THE BLACK HAT is a meditation on villains and the nature of villainy. KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE is about a cross-America trip in a rented car where Klosterman visits the various sites where rock stars died. It should come as no surprise that the book ends with him dropping in at the place where the music died. February 3, 1959. A plane crash that claimed the life of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and a pilot who no one remembers. The pilot's name was Roger Peterson. I mention him here because his life was also valuable even though he wasn't a rock star. Roger Peterson, died at the age of 22 I listened to the audiobook of KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE today while driving up to Petawawa to do a magic show. It is about the sixth time I have listened to that book. My brain is stupid. Instead of seeking out new information and new stories, it keeps insi...

Dec. 8: The Christmas pickle

December 08, 2025

Here is the legend of the Christmas pickle. I am not making this up. This is an actual legend that involves Santa Claus himself, St. Nicholas. According to legend, a long time ago, an evil butcher killed three little boys, cut up their corpses, and put them in a barrel full of brine, hoping to sell them as pickled pork. St. Nicholas - perhaps fresh from throwing money in a poor girl's stockings or punching Arius in the face - happened on this butcher shop and, with a holy touch and a prayer, restored the three children to life. I should think that those three boys suffered from PTSD the rest of their (new) lives. And even today, it is customary in some homes to hide a Christmas pickle on the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Whoever finds that pickle gets an extra present or gets to decide on the order of the present opening. As for me, I want to see a movie about the life of St. Nicholas that incorporates all the legends: punching Arius, resurrecting hacked up children, and ...

Dec. 9: Weird family

December 09, 2025

For a while now, my dad has supplemented his income by officiating at funerals. He's a pastor/chaplain, so he's most comfortable invoking the Lord at these funeral services, but there have been times when the family strictly forbade him from mentioning anything divine or metaphysical. At one of these occasions, dad had to wait for the family to show up at the graveside. They wandered in fashionably late. Several were hungover and a few were wearing attire more suitable for a strip club than a funeral. They seemed bored and listless as dad spoke the words that would see the dearly beloved into the ground. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to say before we depart?" "Yeah," one guy says, and then breaks into a story about how the dearly departed took a lot of money off some recent immigrant restaurant worker who was trying to make a little extra money as a bookie. The poor guy didn't understand how things worked on this side of the pond and he los...