Quaint:: antique; precious
Rind:: melon
Disease:: pandemic
Queer:: As Folk
Pork:: pulled
Soaked:: laundry
Skeleton:: key
Mold:: aspergillus
Finished:: manuscript
Buffalo:: Wings
Want to play along? Get your own copy ofthis week's words and leave a link to your answers over at La Luna Niña's place.
Your Blog Should Be Red |
 Your blog is full of intensity and passion. You are very opinionated - and people love or hate you for it. You have the potential to be both a famous and infamous blogger. |
Weekend Assignment #79: Chicago! It's a toddlin' town. Share some of your favorite things about the City of Big Shoulders. If you've ever been to Chicago, memories of your visit would be a topic. If you live in or near Chicago, some hometown favorite things would be good. If you've never been, share your favorite Chicago-related thing, from the Jordan-era Bulls to the Blues Brothers to Ferris Bueller. As long as it's tangentially related to Chicago, it's all good.
Extra Credit: Chicago Deep Dish Pizza -- the best pizza ever? Your thoughts.
Dear John,
A wicked strong cold front blew through about 12 hours ago. Of course, the leaves are still (mostly) on the trees, so there was a fiercsome noise coming from the woods as this gale blew herself out. With all the rain we've had lately from Katrina and Rita and stuff, it wouldn't surprise me if whole, great swaths of timber have “lodged,” i.e. fallen part way over into the neighboring tree, knocking that one, roots and all, into it's neighbor and so on down the line for a quarter mile or so at a whack. I guess I will have to make a point of going out back and checking the woodlot. Hope no one mistakes me for a moose. Moose “grunting” season begins on Monday. There isn't a whole helluva lot of hunting involved. Scout out an area, pick a site that is accessible from a road with a 4WD pickup truck, sit in a tree stand or just off the verge of the road (outside of the right-of-way – no hunting on the roads allowed), shoulder your large bore rifle-like weapon of choice, and be vewy, vewy noisy. Break sticks. Thwack the bushes, Pick up your megaphone (preferably rolled birch bark, if you want to be authentic) and let fly with the goldarndest beller of a horny moose you ever did hear, thwack some old antlers awhile, bellow some more and your likely to have a couple of cow meese come wandering your way looking for the likely progenitor for their next offspring. Shoot. Clean. Carry. Now does THAT sound like hunting? Taking advantage of horny moose in their annual time of need? Admittedly, there's a whole lot of grunting going on, particularly if your are French or visited a Canuck-style hunters breakfast that morning. Chow down on ployes, maple syrup, poutine, eggs coddled in bacon fat, the shredded pig “parts” cakes whose name eludes me at the moment -- similar to scrapple, about a gallon of coffee with rich cream skimmed off last night's milking, a dozen biscuits and fresh-churned sweet cream butter – the noises you hear out in the bush won't be two moose going at it. No, sireee! They be the tummy rumbles and other sounds of digestion and elimination generated by grown men who know better than to drink 64 ounces of coffee with a two cup grease chaser!
Well, you have me stumped with your choice of Chicago as this week's predigested muse. I can't rightly say I have been to Chicago. I've driven through a couple of times and I have spent interminable hours and hours in the terminal and on the tarmac out at O'hare trying to go somewhere else. I've seen it from a distance in both morning light and colored by sunset. But, aside from driving through at 30 to 45 miles an hour on the expressway and thruway, I have never set foot in Chi town proper.
Even though I haven't been there, I AM grateful for its existence. My daughter found herself and her husband in Chicago. The true impetus for the National Fire Protection Association is intimately involved with preventing another conflagration like the one caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow. There's the stockyards that provoked C.S. Lewis's “The Problem of Pain.” Where would we be without Roger Ebert? Sara Paretsky's “V. I. Warshawski”? Studs Terkel (transplanted New Yorker, but most think of him as a Chicagoan)?
There's the Sears Tower, and Union Station. Chicago was the mid-western hub of railroad activity right from the start. Situated as it is on the shores of Lake Michigan, it was always an attractive land-locked port which later became a major inland seaport with the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Then there's the Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Stock Market. “Business and Chicago have been inextricably bound since the city's beginnings in the early nineteenth century. Although there is no truth to the story that Chicago is Potawatomi for “let's make a deal,” economic and business concerns have not merely shaped but determined Chicago's destiny for almost two hundred years.” At least, according to the “Encyclopedia of Chicago.”
There's a lot to be said for Chicago. It's people are stalwart, resilient and astute in business. They are also corrupt, with an extraordinary tolerance for mendacity and pain – witness Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago White Sox, to cite only two.
But what really sets the city apart in my book is the humor. Second City, self-deprecating and spot-on hilarious. See for yourself:
The Pope, Richard Nixon and Mayor Daley are in a lifeboat, lost at sea. Unfortunately, they only have enough drinking water for one person. The three of them decide to vote to determine who should get the water. They vote, and Daley wins 6 to 2.
Q: What's orange and sleeps six?
A: A streets and sanitation truck.
Q: How do you keep a bear out of your back yard?
A: Put up a goal post.
Q: What three streets in Chicago rhyme with vagina?
A: Paulina, Melvina and Lunt.
There you have my disorganized thoughts on a city I've never visited, but always meant to. Who knows, maybe in a year or two. Take care of Krissy and Athena and have a great weekend.
wil
P.S. Deep dish pizza is for the birds. Give me a thick-crust flat pie pizza any day. If I want soggy pizza, I'll order a Calzone.
2. Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
3. Do you think Houdini ever locked his keys in his car?
4. Why is there a road sign that says "Braille Institute, Next Exit"?
5. Can atheists get insurance for acts of God?
6. If procrastinators had a club would they ever have a meeting?
7. If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?
8. Have you ever wondered why just one letter makes all the difference between here and there?
9. When you go into a hotel you always see reception. Why do you never just see ception?
10. If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
11. If a lawyer and an IRS agent were both drowning, and you could only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper?
12. Isn't it strange that the same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously?
13. If genetic scientists crossed a chicken with a zebra would they get a four-legged chicken with its own barcode?
14. If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice?
15. Why is there always one in every crowd?
16. If all the world is a stage, where does the audience sit?
17. Is it possible to have deja vu and amnesia at the same time?
18. Why do hair shampoo instructions say "Lather. Rinse. Repeat"? If you did this, would you ever be able to stop?
19. Who decided "Hotpoint" would be a good name for a company that sells refrigerators?
20. How do you know when it's time to tune your bagpipes?| You are a Social Conservative (30% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (88% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test |
I mentioned this over at Snoozelets, but so few people read that, that I might as well be pissing into the wind. So, here is linkage, off-AOL, worth adding to your list of favorites. A story, perhaps a novella or novel. Only time will tell. The author has adopted the unisex appellation “patch.” Give it a read – you'll be glad you did.
I think JeffComedy over at What The Hell? made some mention of this. Now comes a reminder from one of the manufacturers of HO model train cars I buy on occasion, Athearn Trains. There is a good reason to plan on skipping dinner preparations on October 5 and going out to eat at participating restaurants. It's called “Dine for America: An restaurant industry benefit for Hurricane Katrina relief.” The participating restaurants donate a portion of earnings (e.g. 100% of profits at Chili's!, $1.00 per dessert at UNO's, etc.) to the American Red Cross' Katrina Disaster Relief Fund. Or, you could make a donation directly. But going out to dinner is more fun than simply writing a check and you don't have to do dishes afterwards!
Monday, September 26, 2005
Otto says: "It's Monday again; time for new questions! Thank you, Tricia, for the first 4 questions below. Let's play!"
1. Ice cream or Yogurt? Ice Cream
2. What's your favorite board game? Scrabble
3. Do you play video games? If yes, what game system(s) do you use? No. Used to have a Pong though...
4. If you were given a chance to change your name, would you do it? If yes, what would your new name be? If, and this is a biggie, I could somehow have my accrued retirement and Social Security time accredited. Forced retirement without a pension is a bitch. New name – not on your life. No sense advertising your new identity to your enemies, is there?
5. What are the last 2 blogs that you've visited? Please share the links with us so we can check them out. Sadly, the last 3 I visited were all “private” AOL Journals. Here's a couple you probably don't visit often or at all that you will find amusing: Surrounded By Nincompoops is a fun one, and I look forward to the now too infrequent cartoons from the mind of bobopuppyhead at The Happy Freaking Ray of Goddamn Sunshine
6. What's your biggest frustration? Me, myself and I.
Have a great week, stay out of the rain, wipe your feet on the mat and your hands on the hand towel, not the freaking guest towels! Eat right and mind your Mama or I'll tan your hide within an inch of your life ... Except for you, Suzy-Q, you like spanking way too much...
Thus begins the blog of John Scalzi, author of these Weekend Assignments. He's a darn nosey fellow and delights in asking questions. Like a lemming, I jump off the cliff each week, squeaking out my replies.
John would like you to click on the link below, get your own copy of this week's assignment and leave a link to your answer in his comments. Do it. The cramps will subside after you're through. And so it goes...
| Rita is plodding implacably toward Texas, and folks there in its path are doing what they can to get out of its way. The evacuation is massive -- more than a million people -- and the logistics of such an undertaking help provide us this week's Weekend Assignment: |
Dear John,
Is it Thursday already? Cthulu forbid! Where in all that's four dimensional has the time gone? I'm getting old, boy, and you can bet I've come by these gray hairs honestly. But, the forgetfulness... Oy, Vader!
No sooner has the last of Ophelia blown away but what her big little sister Rita has to make her erratic way through the Gulf. And like many toddlers, she started heading one way but got diverted by the cat heading off in a different, albeit similar, direction. My inlaws and outlaws and step-thises and thatses in Louisiana have only just begun to get their head's wrapped around the notion that their world will never be the same and now comes this strumpet to strum on their tuffets and blow away any vestige of security they might have had. I suspect Dante's seventh ring is looking mighty tempting to many folks right about now. Evacuating a million and a half people without closing or changing over the inbound lanes of the Interstate highways. Sheer stupidity on the Governor's part.
Back in a former life, it was my job to deal with crisis of both minor and major scale. Emergency response planning is a thankless task, but a strangely appropriate one for the likes of me with an overactive imagination and more nightmares than any three other alcoholics can muster. I was one of the princes of the 'worst case scenario.' But that's what's necessary for a successful, executable plan. And also what is wrong with the crony-ridden Federal system of a castrated FEMA ensconsced within the Department of Homeland Security. Oops! Sorry about that aside...
To answer this week's question, based on my personal and professional experience, I'd take along all irreplaceable photographs, movies, videos and personal CD's and DVD's and family paintings; all irreplaceable or difficult to replace documents not already in a safe deposit box, and the hard drive to the main computer (I consider these one item); and, a special memento, one that reminds me of the home we are leaving – in the present case, my wife's bell buoy wind chime.
I can't put a number to all of the times I have heard a victim of a house or apartment fire lament the loss of the famly photographs, the loss of home movies or videos of family and friends. But I have also consoled folks who have lost literally everything – homes burned flat to the ground, homes where the largest piece of debris left after the tornado has finished with them is no more than a pack of cigarettes in size. And those folks, almost every man, woman and child, miss having a special keepsake of the place, be it a bell, or a piece of stained glass from the window in the front door, or the painting of Great Aunt Nellie that hung over the fireplace. It literally tears your heart out to hear the pain in their voices as they recount in a hoarse whisper what the thing meant to them. And sometimes, it isn't the thing but the place, the view that is gone forever, the feeling or sense of peace and rightness with the world torn away and never to be recovered that weighs most heavily on their minds. It's a wretched thing to watch as a man worries at the edge of what he is missing and can not recover again, be it peace, a sense of self or place, or just an old boot scraper that lived behind the kitchen door for thirty years.
Before you ask again, no, I've never had to evacuate my family and myself to flee before foul weather or ravening hordes. But I have fled forest fires alone, in the mountains, when one mistake would mean my life. It's an uneasy feeling, I assure you.
As you noted in a different entry this morning, it is highly likely that energy costs will once again begin rising rapidly to heretofore unseen levels in this country. That means all expendable goods like food as well as durable trade goods will increase in price as transportation and production costs rise. Salaries are flat or decreasing, no thanks to the present administration and Congress. Cynics like me have been saying for years that this economy, this country's economic base, is so eroded that it is only a shell, a house of cards. It's crumbling around us even as we struggle on and it gives me no pleasure to have been right that an economy founded upon consumer debt will founder and collapse as that debt increases without an increase in the means or reducing the debt. In plain terms, “you can't rob Peter to pay Paul.” And that's what we've been doing since the early sixties. Some would say, since 1936! But giving tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of this country's population is certainly not the way to solve the problems of an imminent collapse. Food for thought.
Here's hoping this finds you all fit as a fiddle and ready to take on the problems that present themselves. Little did I know my mother was actually cursing me when she toasted my thirteenth birthday with, “may you live in interesting times.”
wil
Where are all the "intelligent design" advocates who are atheists (or even just agnostics)?
It's a fair question. After all, how can ID advocates hope to be taken seriously if they all have such apparent biases, agendas and axes to grind? If, as its advocates claim, "intelligent design" is strictly about science, evidence, and experimentation and has nothing to do with a belief in God, then it is not unreasonable to expect that there should be some atheists out there who accept ID as science.
It's a valid question and I await the ID camp's attempt at answers.
| Solar X-rays: Geomagnetic Field: |
|
| adopt your own virtual pet! |
My blog is worth $34,436.94.
How much is your blog worth?
moon phases |
<>
Save the Planet
Kill
Yourself
Church
of Euthanasia
The One Commandment:
"Thou
shalt not procreate"
The Four Pillars:
suicide
· abortion
cannibalism
· sodomy
