Open Threads

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!

The Cubs beat the White Sox today 3-0, all the while sporting snazzy looking green hats to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Although I am a Pirates fan, I have a soft spot for the Cubs, and anyone who has been to Wrigley just once will fall in love with it. I watched it on WGN while chomping on a big bowl of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes. I am not Irish, but I love celebrating things like this- special foods on special days. It is fun, and it keeps life interesting.

BTW- Cactus and Grapefruit League Baseball, March rains, St. Patrick’s Day- it is spring, folks, whether you are ready for it or not.

Cubs Win! Cubs Win! ThePost + Comments

Blogger is dying on me again…. Absolutely no consistency…

Blogger is dying on mePost + Comments

Now the Fox news channel is reporting that there will be a ‘cease-fire’ in the Middle East.

Which makes me wonder how that will be accomplished. Naive me. I thought Arafat could not control the suicide bombers.

Yasser Arafat, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Accomplished Terrorist.

Now the Fox news channelPost + Comments (1)

According to Fox News, there may be peace talks on the way.

According to Fox News, therePost + Comments

Sorry for no posts, but life got in the way of everything again. I guess if I ever really intend to have a steady audience, I need to be less erratic with my postings. At any rate, I hope to be back to normal after this weekend.

I do have one beef I want to share with you, though. A couple of hours ago I was in my favorite coffee shop to get a cup of pick-me-up, and in front of me were several young college co-eds (Why is it that we can say a college is co-ed, we know it takes boys and girls, but when we say a young co-ed, we know we are talking about girls?).

I try not to let my prejudices out, but these girls were hippies- and not the kind that have 40 years of hard drinking and hard drugs behind them that they can use as an excuse for erratic behavior. These were the worst kind- the 19 year old daughter of an attorney or investment banker or something or other who had intentionally made themselves look like hell. This was their idea of rebellion. And they stunk. Bad.

So there I am in my favorite coffee shop, standing behind putrid smelling self-inflicted hippies, when I spot a “Indict Tobacco Executives for Murder” button on her backpack. These girls, given copious amounts of soap and a few weeks worth of Bean-O, could all have been attractive. But they chose not to be. In fact, they chose to foul my air. The hippiest (is that a word- is now, I guess) of the three reeked of patchouli and incense and had long, filthy, matted dreadlocks, and I had to jump back several times as she flung them through the air every time she shook her head. Here she is, making a statement against tobacco companies, and she is flinging her mangy, germ-infested hair through the air, showering all of us with her filth. Everytime she did that with her hair, I had images of someone twirling around a plague-infested rat by its tail.

“Indict Tobacco Executives for Murder.” I would have paid someone to blow smoke in my face to cover those girls stench.

I am done complaining.

Sorry for no posts, butPost + Comments

Jonathon Last in the Weekly Standard on blogging.

And I have insomnia again, and the History Channel is boring me with repeats of the Silent Service. A&E Biographies are all repeats (Gates, Wozniak, Perot, and Bezos), and I hate basketball, so ESPN is out. Grumble.

Jonathon Last in the WeeklyPost + Comments

Here is to hoping it stops snowing where James Lileks is, and he gets some fresh air and exercise. I think he is slipping into a Shining-like “Here’s Johnnnny” mode:

I’m surely not the first to note this, and doubtless not the last, but I am haunted by the possibility that the hokey-pokey is, indeed, what it’s all about. We’ve been doing the hokey-pokey today, and every time I sing the revelation that this dance is the summation of human wants and desires, I get a little queasy. That’s one hell of a message to teach your child. But what of love, good works, adding to the accumulated ingenuity of mankind, al dente pasta with fresh tomato sauce, fast cars with manual transmissions, flowers in the spring, newly-mown grass in the summer and the bittersweet beauty of the fall, to say nothing of the peaceful unanimity of a snow-covered world? Nope. Hokey-pokey. That’s it.

What’s more, the hokey-pokey itself is not defined. Think of it: you put you foot in. You put your foot out. You put your foot in, and you shake it all around. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around; that’s what it’s all about. I defy anyone to find the actual hokey-pokey in that sequence. It’s not the foot-putting; it’s not the turning yourself around. Perhaps it’s the circular wagging motion of one’s index fingers, which makes the lesson even more depressing: it’s the gesture we used in high school to indicate ironic enthusiasm. The hokey-pokey means no more than “big whoop.”

A deeply cynical man wrote this song; a deeply cynical man.

Then he mentions Stephen King in the next paragraph.

Here is to hoping itPost + Comments