I C E- IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

When paramedics, at the scene of an accident, come across your cell phone,
here's a great way to ensure that they know how to get in touch with your
loved ones. You never can tell! This is compliments of dear friend Corey, who has
worked for 911 for 22 years (she started out in middle school) and she and I are the only two people alive who know why I call her 'Corky" and always will. I always will love her, too. She's a great person.



I did my ICEing just before I sat down to blogulate and I am glad I did. Did you ever find a cell phone and scroll through all the numbers, trying to figure out whom to call, and then you call some friend of the phone-loser and they're all "Why are you bothering me about this?"



Go grab some ICE. We'll wait here.



ICE - 'In Case of Emergency'
We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends.


If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn't know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this 'ICE' (In Case of Emergency) Campaign. The concept of 'ICE' is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name 'ICE' ( In Case Of Emergency).


The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn't know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as 'ICE.'

For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference!

Let's spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our Mobile phones today!

Please forward this. It won't take too many 'forwards' before everybody will know about this . It really could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest . ICE will speak for you when you are not able to.

Neither Have I

Speaking of people who are famous for wanting to be famous - junior division - Kim Kardashian is telling us on her blog that she never has had plastic surgery. Great. Kim Kardashian has a blog, so now no one will read mine.



I know how to fight back.



I have never had plastic surgery either. I've had metal surgery, in which they sawed my leg in half to install a knee replacement, but it did not land me on "Dancing With The Stars."



I've had spinal taps, arthroscopic surgery, cavities, clogged ears, been pecked by a rooster and bitten by a donkey, got knocked off my bike by a Great Dane, and had the croup, the grippe and the measles. I tell you this in the interest of complete disclosure.



Oh, in other Kardashian news, her dad's former client Orenthal J. Simpson is headed for the Ironbar Hilton for five-to-life.



I don't think he's ever had plastic surgery either.

It's That Time of the Year

Nervous days, sleepless nights. That's how it is every year around this time when I'm waiting for the Nobel Prize committee to call and say I've been honored in the Cooking Husband or Safe Driver category. I keep my cell phones charged, I try not to leave the house after dinner, and still, no call. Perhaps if I had gone and actually learned to do something laudable...



But, while waiting for the phone to ring, I checked to see how the selection committee was coming along with their other, less important, categories. Such as, say, physics. This year, the Prize in Physics goes to Yoichiro Nambu (born 1921) of the Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics” and to Makoto Kobayashi (b. 1944) of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa (b. 1940) of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University Kyoto, “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”.



Ahem. I believe it was the groundbreaking work by our entire class back at Towsontown Junior High School that predicted the existence of three families of quarks. That was back in the days when Steve Allen was popular, and part of his schtick was making odd noises like "Schmock! schmock!" so it was a short leap for us to holler "Quark" and set up in our minds little imaginary families. Messrs. Kobayashi and Maskawa deserve a lot of credit for their work, and you can see how they'd be hanging around the laboratory until all hours, because you know how it goes: You get all excited delving into spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics, and the next thing you know, it's way past dinnertime, the kids are already rearranging their subatomic particles and the Safeway is all out of rotisserie chicken.



That's always a cool thing about the Nobel winners: no matter how brilliant, no matter that they think and work in an intellectual area where I dare not tread, they always have to pose like Gerald Ford on his first day in office, toasting an English muffin, scooping up dog poop from the yard, or dropping the kids off at hockey practice. That way, brains or no brains, we can all say "he is truly one of us."



What I really did in eighth-grade science lab was some rather noteworthy investigation into the magnetic arrangement of iron filings.

Post # 100

I keep promising myself that I won't always go political on this blog, because I have good friends and kinfolk for whom I feel tremendous affection and respect whose views are at total variance with mine. But damn it all, I really have to say something when this old man who cheated on his wife and had to run around with the beer baron's daughter and do all those cheesy things as if he were starring in a Tony Curtis movie, this old man who at one time tonight called Ronald Reagan his hero and then ten minutes later called Theodore Roosevelt his hero, who nonetheless calls everyone "my friend," this playboy son and grandson of admirals who got into the Naval Academy and was graduated with the stellar academic record of being #594 in a class of #599, this temperamental superannuate who so callously and disingenuously selected a running mate solely on the basis of her gender, who even tonight rails on about his insane "I will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell," who stirs up the alta cockers with his worrying about Russia, as if this were 1957: when this man wants to be president of the United States, I say it will be a very sad United States should that ever happen.




But it won't, so what the hey. And there were five lesser students than he in his USNA class, so let them run, too.




As Sidney Freedman said on M*A*S*H* -



Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice:

Pull down your pants and slide on the ice.





A whole 'nother topic:



The Baltimore SUN recently dropped Zippy the Pinhead from its daily comic lineup. Zippy's brilliant creator, Bill Griffith, has asked for support in convincing the editorial board of the local fishwrap to reinstate the Zip. He received support from the owner of the Senator Theatre, the last of the gilded movie palaces in B'more. When you go to the movies in the mall, it's a lot like seeing one of the "See It Now" documentaries in Eleventh Grade Social Studies, except that while the popcorn is better, no one ever remembers to make finger puppets in the projector beam, or hoot and holler when the film breaks and goes flapflapflapflapflap and the teacher is down in the faculty lounge hooving on a Lark. My friends, please contact my friends down at the SUN, my friends, and ask that they bring back my friends from Zippy, my friends.

Hey, I could be a McSpeechwriter!

Coming back from the car place on Saturday, I turned on the truck radio, only to find that all the radio presets had been lost, since they had changed the battery. So on the way back down the long and winding Harford Road, I scanned the bands and tried to remember my 6 AM and 12 FM stations. Eclectic as I am, you can punch up NPR on my radio or you can punch up country or oldies or nutjob talk stations.


But on one station that must number its listening audience in the dozens, I caught one snippet of conversation as my nimble fingers nimbly punched and scanned. A guy with pious overtones said, "Did you hear that, brothers and sisters? He's going to do all he can to have 'Gossip Girl' taken off the air!"


I don't know what "Gossip Girl" is all about. I've never watched it, but I did see the face of an actress who appears on the show on the cover of a slick magazine while I waited in a supermarket line the other day, and I did not see the sign on the devil in the young woman's image, so I'm confused here.

Could someone tell me why it's so important for someone to have this show removed from the air? More important, can someone explain why this person, who could be the president of whatever television network beams "Gossip Girl" into our cables and dishes every week, or a pecan cracker from Baking Soda, Alabama for all I know, would find it necessary to have this show removed from the viewing choices of the multitudes?

Sir, if you don't like "Gossip Girl," I urge you to avoid watching it. If you are responsible for assisting the maturation of a child or some children, and you find the show deleterious to their development, then by all means you should tell them not to watch it. Those are options within your control. Don't worry about the rest of us. Believe me, I am worried enough about you.

It will look just like this again if I ever wax it.
I had to take my pickup in for routine 60,000 mile maintenance, and it wound up costing over $3100, so it looks like I will be spending the next several years behind the wheel of a classic unwaxed 2000 Tacoma. I guess it’s a gamble, but I just don’t feel like going in debt for a new truck and car right now, what with my looming patriotic obligation to bail out the capitalists of Wall Street and all. So we’ll spend a few dollars getting the old machines fixed up and see what happens. At the dealership - the outstanding Jones Toyota/ Scion/Subaru/Hyundai/Nissan/Chrysler/GMC/Tonka Dealer up the road a few miles, I was startled to see a 1971-or-so Chevy pickup sitting in the showroom. It looked immaculate, as you might expect a truck that old with only 39 miles on its odometer to look. Someone very smart bought that truck, likely for less than I invested in mine today, stashed it away through Watergate, MTV and Zubaz pants, and now they are asking $49,995 for it. And the only source of entertainment within? No GPS system to guide your trip, no MP3 player, no CD or cassette deck…just an AM radio. Still, someone is gonna buy it for the 50 thousand semolians they’re asking. Guys were hanging around buzzing on it like yellow jackets on a fallen Fuji apple. Another gold mine shot to heck. If only I had had the foresight to scoop up a vehicle or two 30 or 40 years ago and park them in an old barn, only to wheel them out when the price had peaked, I would be writing to you from the luxury condo at the beach I would own had I had the vision to snap up some beachfront property when the only living creatures interested in living there were sand crabs and sea gulls.


But I was wondering how it comes that cars today have such odd names. Do you really know the difference between an Acura TL and an Acura TSX? Was there an Audi A8 K before the A8 L model came along? And all these three-letter code names: Cadillac CTS, Chevy Malibu LTZ, Chrysler 300C SRT, Dodge Stratus SXT…in my puckishness, were I to find myself at the helm of a big automaking firm, I might be pleased to preside over the launch of the 2010 Hyundai BFD this time next year. And how about the Hyundai Sonata? Does it make you burst into song? The Nissan 350Z Enthusiast - does it fire you up with zest and vigor? Does your Suzuki Reno make you want to go to Nevada? On the other hand, how good and solid did it feel to tell the gang, “I’ll be around about 7...let’s hop in the Galaxie and go for a ride…” or the Impala, or the Belvedere or the Biscayne. Now, the best you can do is to say, “Why don’t you get in your Kia AMF and say ‘Adios, My Friend’? ” or something like it…

Oh! So that's how it is!

On Friday I was flipping around the tv dial at lunch time, while sluggishly scooping tuna chunks out of a Pyrex® container with lo-fat lo-carb lo-sodium lo-taste soy chips. and I stumbled across the FOX News channel. Normally, I hit the "ch up^" button as quickly as possible when I land on Faux Noise, but I was up to my wrist in Bumblebee, so sorry, Charlie, I left the tv where it was.




And I am so glad that I did, because a woman came on and explained why, in the face of the current economic crisis that we face, the unemployment rate continues to rise. "Why, it's because of poorly-managed federal fiscal policies and unwise deregulation of the banking and mortgage industries!,"you might exclaim. But according to this woman, that would be wrong. She calmly explained, using little itty-bitty words, that, you see, there were a lot of people who were like "housewives" (been a while since you heard that word, I'll betcha!)




And anyway, they heard rumors of things getting bad in the economy - they may or may not have been true - and then they thought, "well, I might need a job, so I better go and look for one," and when they couldn't find one right away, they counted as unemployed!





So OF COURSE the unemployment rate is going up if you look at like that, for Pete's sake!






In other news, it turns out that we don't really get hungry at dinnertime. We just hear that everyone else is chowing down and we figure it's the thing to do.







This explains the last two presidential elections.

It's only words, and words are all I have

New wordform (new to me, Mr. Last-to-Hear) heard on talk radio th' other day: sigoth. Meaning, significant other. Use it in a sentence:
"Would you go home to tell that story to your sigoth and expect to have a pleasant evening after that? I don't think so!"




Apparently, this neologism is spreading like cream cheese. It's listed in The Urban Dictionary between 'Sigonella High" and "Sigournierrr Weavierrrr." I have reporters on the ground checking for further damage.




Oh - that's the other one! This is from those gossip TV shows that clutter TV between 7 and 8 pm, when your only choices are "Inside Billy Bush" and a rerun of "No One Can Really Stand Raymond, If You Want To Know The Truth."




staccato, high-pitched delivery:




"Petticoat Junction's Bea Benadaret is all set to adopt a British bundle baby, and we have reporters on the ground with all the late-breaking details!"




"John F. Kennedy! That final trip to Dallas! Nephew Patrick shares his memories, and we have reporters on the ground with the family's sorrow."




My two questions:

How much more time and effort does it take to say "significant other"?



How can a reporter not be on the ground?

Just the tip, just for a second

"Are we gonna get hopped up enough to make some bad decisions?" It dawns on me that millions of people make lousy decisions, some hopped up and some not so hopped, and those decisions affect millions and millions, some as yet unborn, some as yet unaware.



So? So I watch "Wedding Crashers" with the avid devotion that a Kennedy scholar pays to the "Berliner" speech footage. I make this promise: if you watch the first 9:04 of this Vince Vaughn - Owen Wilson classic, your troubles will roll away faster than Hockey Mama can drop the "g" from her gerunds, makin' her sound a lot like someone poppin' up in the cornfield on "Hee Haw."



My old firehouse buddy Johnny L. was the first wedding crasher I knew. Near us was a semi-swanky banquet-reception hall called Martin's Eudowood. Johnny, whose work schedule most weeks called for him not to work Monday through Friday, with weekends off (and he was his own boss!) used to slip into some khakis, a shirt and (clip-on) tie and sports jacket on Saturday afternoons, hang around the parking lot near Drug Fair ("Don't say 'drug store,' say 'Drug Fair!' There's a big difference!") and loiter near the entrance to Martin's, positioning himself for a rapid entry - a surge, if you will - right about the time that the snackage was over and the salads were being placed in front of the guests. By the time that the bride's Uncle Peter was reaching for the fake bleu cheese dressing, still smarting over being placed at table 10 with the distant kin from Bowie while big-shot Cousin Tom and his inbred brood were perched up near the band at table 2, Johnny slid into a vacant seat, introducing himself as a guy who worked with the groom, or as distant kin from outside Bowie, or as a boyhood neighbor of the groom who hadn't seen him since they "played Greek dodge together in 3rd grade!"



In the movie, the crashers researched their "roles" so they had acceptable backstories as to who they were, why they belonged there. But Johnny, armed only with the audacity of youth and a sort of preternatural hunger that was rarely sated by just one dinner per night, always went in there a nobody and came out a star. He would even go so far as to approach the groom and bride in the post-dinner, let's-get-dancin' phase of the festivities, making the recently betrothed peer quizzically as he recounted how they "met" at "work."



What really set Johnny apart from the rest of us, pretenders to his crown as King Of All Moochers, was that he would secret Ziploc® baggies within his sports jacket and somehow walk out with goodies à la carte. Testing the limits of his nerve, his stealthy ability with a serving spoon, and the renowned strength of the Ziploc® seal, Johnny would often show up back at the firehouse with a baggie full of seafood newburg. Other pockets would have slices of wedding cake, cheese cubes, lasagna, and bottles of imported beer.



There's always someone who doesn't show up for a wedding - couldn't get off work, kid has the croup, unexpected company from Amarillo shows up the night before - and let's hope there's always a Johnny to step up to the plate. And the dessert table, and the open bar.

Sarah? Get me the diner!

This past summer we stood on the beach at Cape May Point, NJ, and watched across the Delaware Bay. "Look, Peggy," I exclaimed, "you can see Delaware from here!"


That makes me qualified to be vice-president of the United States, according to the governor of Alaska, but I will state this now: if elected, I will not serve. It wouldn't be fair, after all these negative things that mean people have been saying about Sarah Palin.


But now my own words are coming back for another hearing. Back in April, I was thinking about Senator Roman Hruska, a staunch advocate for the mediocre and their right to serve in higher office so as to represent all the mediocre people across our land. Now here's the governor of Alaska, speaking to rightwing radio host Hugh Hewitt, about why people are so down on her, just because she cannot supply the name of one magazine or newspaper that she reads in order to keep her razor-sharp mind honed to fine perfection: "Oh, I think they're [critics] just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It's time that a normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it."

Of course, the words of Demosthenes, of Lincoln, of Wm. Jennings Bryan, of Minnie Pearl come to mind whenever this woman opens up on a topic. Yes, Sarah, that's all we want, all we hope for in our national leaders, all the greatness to which we can aspire. Joe Six-Pack American. No longer should we hope for another George Washington to lead us on the road to freedom, a Franklin D. Roosevelt to lead us out of the economic abyss into which the last eight years have dragged us, a Martin Luther King to lead an entire race to the equality that all people deserve. No, let's exalt the dull, the poorly read, the ill-informed, the mediocre mainstream of plebeian doltishness.

And what's scary is that there are plenty of people who will drop their remotes, scratch themselves in an inappropriate manner, and say, "You know, this woman here, she has the right idea, yaknowwhaddamean, honey?" Let's forego the filet mignon for a baloney sandwich, the fine paintings for a decal showing wide-eyed kids or dogs playing cards, the chilled Chablis for a grape Tru-Ade, and be done with class and the desire to be better in all things.

Come Thanksgiving time, when Old McCain and the uninformed governor are weaving their tales of woe, and C-MAC looks at another long winter of hearing J-MAC ramble on about the good old days when he favored uh no I mean he didn't favor oh all right he favored regulation of the market, we will all be thankful that eight years of hell are coming to an end on a cold winter's day. 1/20/09.

Cash or charge?

This is going to be something different. : An Oprah-centric entry in which I don’t take Oprah to task. Oprah, no. Oprah’s mother, yes.

According to the Associated Press, Vernita Lee owes a clothing store in her town, Milwaukee, around $160,000 for clothing she purchased and for which now feels disinclined to pay.

So the mind reels. Was the clothing damaged in shipment? Wrong size? Wrong color? Sleeves a little too sleevy, blouses blousy, suits didn’t suit her? Did she feel hemmed in by the hems? Did the little tag in the back of the neck tag her skin? Seven times “no” to those questions, good buddy.

Ms. Lee is responding to the suit filed by Valentina Inc., seeking $155,547 in purchases and interest as of July 1 by filing a counterclaim, contending that Valentina took advantage of her "lack of knowledge, ability, and-or capacity" when creating her credit account.

So, that’s the defense. You should not have allowed me to buy this stuff! You know I can’t handle credit accounts and I tend to go way over my head with debt! Some lawyers – and she has hired three of them for this case – told Ms. Lee that would work in court, so here’s the plan: We go to court and say it’s all their fault! They never should have sold it to me!

There are unconfirmed reports that Ms. Lee is headed for a big career as a Wall Street financial planner, or maybe as an adviser to old McCain. Sarah Palin reportedly was trying to figure out how many of them moose-huntin’ outfits she could buy for $160,000 worth of beaver pelts.

Eight honors

I hear that the number 8 holds mystical powers in the Asian mind. Always wanting to learn more about this crazy old world, I googled around and found that it's true. For instance, China put out a list called "Eight Honors, Eight Shames." ("Be rong ba chi" in Chinese.) It is the set of behavioral guidelines for the people of China.



The eight rules are as follows.


1. Love the Country do it no harm.
2. Serve the people, do no disservice
3. Follow Science, discard ignorance
4. Be diligent, not indolent
5. Be United, Help each other, Make no gains at another's expense
6. Be honest and trustworthy, do not spend ethics for profits
7. Be disciplined and law-abiding, not chaotic and lawless
8. Live plainly, struggle hard, do not wallow in luxuries and pleasure



OK, I can see #1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 working here. #5 goes totally against the grain of our capitalist system, so that's out, and you try to get any three Americans not to "wallow in luxuries and pleasure" and let me know how that comes out. There goes #8! And I'm not so sure that we all agree on not being chaotic and lawless. I mean, just watch afternoon tv, or COPS on FOX. There are enough misdemeanors, felonies, civil actions, torts and trumped-up charges to fill the air with courtroom shows every single day, banishing reruns of "Eight Simple Rules" to the almost-unseen ABC Family network.



Here in Baltimore, there is arguably no greater hero than Cal Ripken, Jr., who wore #8 every day for 2,632 consecutive Oriole games, many of which were quite boring, but still he was there every day, disciplined and law-abiding. Because he came "from nearby Aberdeen, MD" he was considered a local guy who embodied the best of Baltimore's blue-collar work ethic. I don't mind telling you that I am only one of many whose den fairly creaks with Ripkenania, and the few times I have been in his presence have always been memorable. He is, pure and simple, a great guy. Peggy and I were at a mall one night during Christmas shopping time and we saw Cal and family chowing down at a TGI Friday's. Some other guy and I stood transfixed, watching the great man eat french fries just like any mere mortal.



Of course, another local hero is Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, with whom I proudly share a high school alumni affiliation (Towson!) and a height (6'5") and a birthday (June 30), and there the similarities end. He has a slight edge in Olympic swimming gold medals, 8 - 0. This Saturday there is going to be a huge parade through the streets of Towson, saluting Michael, and fellow Olympic medalists Katie Hoff and Jessica Long. The crowd should be epic, to allow everyone in town to cheer loudly.



Baltimore County has a long tradition of making a fuss over our celebrated citizens. Last summer when Cal Jr was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, the county painted orange '8's on eight intersections around town. For this parade, in recognition of Phelps's eight gold medals, the county has painted a big gold '8' right in downtown Towson.



You know, there's an old expression, "Everyone loves a parade." This is why!

I'm A...

I understand why people from Marshall University came up with the expression "We Are Marshall." It summed up the feelings of shared sorrow and mourning after 75 members and associates of their football team died in a plane crash in 1970. It's a nice motto, and it joins the bereaved and their friends and loved ones and the entire college community in a circle of sorrow. That's nice, and worthwhile, that they own their emotions and the balm that helped them heal.



Not so other schools, so when I saw a "We Are Penn State" bumper sticker the other day, I chortled at how crass it is to steal a slogan and re-purpose it for your own parochial use. And surely, Penn State is not the only school whose alumni or student government association ripped off the Marshall mantra.



But it seems like anyone can just apply any label to themselves these days. Singers do it all the time - when their pop music fans desert them, they just go country and claim that they've "always been country." Jewel is trying this image on for size now, and I understand Eddie Money is trying that path as well. It's Vince Vaughn in "Wedding Crashers": "I feel so tiny in your arms...I'm 6' 5" but I feel like I'm 4 feet." It's "I'm a Mac" vs. "I'm a PC." Claim to be tiny, claim to be one sort of computer or another, just say it often enough and maybe it'll come true.



Old McCain has taken to calling himself "The Original Maverick." That comes as news to the many who thought he was so inside the Washington power elite that he had been criticized for improper judgement in that whole stinky Keating Five Savings and Loan scandal. Maybe that was another John McCain?


His adherents demonstrate their mastery of spelling.



I had an original Maverick. A 1977 two-door model, it ran pretty well, didn't always want to start on cold, rainy mornings, and just as old McCain did when he dumped his first wife, I replaced it with a younger, better-looking model. One thing I remember about that car is that because of the odd slope of the rear window, you couldn't see what was going on behind you. Sometimes, it's best to look behind you and realize you should have stayed where you were. Wherever that car is now, I don't think it's of much use to anybody. You couldn't even drive a hockey team around in it. It had its day, performed its useful service.

Admit it!

We all fell for it - we all thought there was something to hypnosis. I mean, it was advertised in all the best comic books, and we all thought we could waggle a pocket watch in front of Miss Rennie in room 4 at Hampton School and then snap our fingers and make her cluck like a chicken. Notice that the ad informs us that this deals in modern hypnosis. None of that ancient stuff. After all, we had timidity to conquer.

And these gas masks! We all had 'em, gotten from Sunny's Surplus, and so we all walked around looking all bug-faced. These ads must have been from the 50's, because that was the last time that two guys had to form a limited liability corporation, pooling half a buck each to send away for war surplus gas masks.

Elementary school kids. Gas. You know where this always wound up going.

I wanted an Ümlaut, but whaddya gonna do?

If you don't have an IKEA near you, I'd consider moving. Of all the great Swedish furniture stores that we have in the greater Baltimore area (JC Torkelson and Montgomery Gottfrid spring to mind), IKEA is the greatest. They have a scratch-and-dent room where a handy man, or I, can buy wood shelves that fell out of a bookshelf for 50 cents and make our own bookshelves, or not. They have all sorts of furniture and home items. They even have Swedish food for sale - grog! salmon! loganberry juice! And a restaurant with Swedish meatballs and cold salmon plates. It's the sort of a place that's suitable for a family field trip, and I think that just being there makes one feel, I dunno, sort of Ikea-ish.




IF YOU GO, you'll notice the brand names on everything from sofas to light bulbs are not you're used to seeing down at Value Village. Hearty, stocky Swedish names! Vivika! Komplement! Furuskug! Ofelia! Fortunately, if you have any questions, you can ask Courtney, Lauren or Justin, who all work there along with Jessica, Nicole and Matthew.




But I found this site on which you simply enter your own first name and the amazing computer machine, right over what your president calls "the internets," will bestow upon you your own Ikea brand name. That's mine, right above: Markind, a walloping, hearty meatloaf of a table. Hope you like yours!

Two cool web sites

In my radio days, one of the worst things you could call a DJ was " a time and temp jock,"meaning that the jock in question had little to say to his audience besides, "10 'til 7 here on the mighty 740, got 57 degrees here at the station, and it's time to hear from Mr. Al Martino." I tried to avoid that syndrome, but to this day, two of my favorite things to know are a) what time is it and b) what's up with the weather?

Timeanddate.com links to an amazing array of world clocks and you can even set one for your home town, as I did (click on the above to see what time I'm enjoying right now.) This gadget is accurate to the second, as anything should be.

A local guy has this weather site that just absolutely stuns me. Click on it - and behold. It tells everything about current conditions, links to radar and other charts, and the great thing is, Perry Hall is right around the corner, literally, from us, so this is close enough to count as my home weather station.

With these two sites, and, of course, Merriam-Webster to look up new words, maybe this crazy internet thing will take off! You never know.

So shoot me for liking good grammar

Friends, it's past the point of just hollering about people saying, "my computer needs to have it's hard drive replaced" or, "I know your only fooling" or, "Its a long way to Tipperary" or, "I wanted to see if I could borrow you're lawnmower." These are the classics that everyone pulls out of their hat when they want to demonstrate the grammatical errors so often seen in everyday writing. Oh yeah, that's another one: "Our low prices save you money everyday." When I tried to explain why this slogan was ineptly expressed at a local grocery store, to share the subtle difference between an adjective and an adverbial phrase, the manager looked at me askance, and kept peering over my shoulder, apparently looking for a hidden camera. I, too, enjoy the work of Allen Funt, but it was not afoot in that instance. I've become so inured to all this that I no longer even comment on any but the most egregious offense, but today I saw signs of a mutation that, if allowed to spread, could threaten the Franco-American way of life we have come to cherish. It all began with a certain predilection for saying "Voila!" but so many people kept spelling it wrong; it began to lose its effect. They would say, "I put the cake in the oven and Viola! It came out perfect." I kept waiting for someone to say "I wanted to buy an instrument that was like a violin in many ways, but richer and darker in tone, and Viola! I found it" but that never came across my reading. But, there developed in the national consciousness a desire to throw this French exclamation around (it's not that heavy, anyway.) I have now, for the second time, been plowing through some prose and found this: "I was looking for Renfrew Court and then wala! I found it." So, because of lax vigilance on the part of Linguistic Security, " \vwä-'lä\" became "\vi-'o-l?" and now is hiding under the neologism "wala."

Is it too late to run to Chick-Fil-A for some Chick-n-Minis?

Just because I had no other picture to run today:

It's a crime, the way they treated this man

I am a big fan of old movies, and I like the ones set in old prisons, such as "Angels With Dirty Faces," starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and the Dead End Kids. That's the one where Cagney is a big mobster and O'Brien is his childhood friend from the streets who, rather turn to a life of crime, went into the priesthood. He tries to get Cagney to "turn yellow" to set an example for the urchins among the great unwashed of his parish. While Cagney is in prison, the men are not allowed to talk, and they work about 22 hours a day in a jute mill, and the meals consist of a harsh gruel (possibly Krusty© Brand Imitation Gruel, for all we know.) There are lots of other old prison films in which some guy in the mess hall suddenly breaks the silence and screams, "I ain't eatin' this slop!" and throws his tin plate and the contents thereof toward the closest guard, who deals with the infraction by getting about 27 other guards to pummel the man until the next commercial. Or the one where Victor Mature gets out of jail, and they give him the customary five dollars and a new suit, only on Mature, it's a custom-tailored dandy of a suit. Unlikely, unless he made extra money in the jute mill and could pay for alterations.

I just checked - jute is a cheap natural fibre from which man has made twine and burlap. Glad I checked.

What brings all this up is that some former high school teacher from a county just west of here is currently in Maryland's Big House. He would not have had to go there, except he kept talking his students - male and female - into posing for nudie pictures. Clearly, a man who belongs in jail, and for a good long time. But he recently was turned down for modification of sentence. He claimed that the other inmates were really being nasty to him ever since they found out he was a convicted child sexual offender. The nastiness took several forms. Sometimes he was not invited to join in the nightly Faro competition, and sometimes he was shunned for weeks on end. Tonight's segment here on American Jurisprudence concludes with this entreaty: prison is a tough, tough place. A real hellhole. Considering some of the people you will meet who ought to be there and aren't , think of what the ones who currently are incarcerated must be like. And that should make it easy to want to avoid their ranks.

11:44 AM, September 22

I love autumn. It's such a great season that it has two names; you can also call it "fall." What other season has two names around here? Oh yeah - summer, also known as "hell." Heat and humidity are my natural enemies, and when autumn arrives this morning at 11:44 AM (but who's counting?) I will be one happy guy.

Here's what summer always looks like around here:




And this is our lush autumn landscape:





No contest. Welcome, sweet autumn. We greet thee gladly!

I Told Sarah Palin, "Theeeeenks but nooooe theeeeenks"

Seem like a nice couple...Papa John and Cruella

I got schooled and now I understand. To think what a fool I was, not to see the clear-cut superiority of a nasty old man and his trophy veep. But thanks to my friend Carole, who passed the following along to me, I no longer have to wallow in ignorance. Also, thanks to Carole, I can go enjoy the Ravens being 2-0 without having to come up with my own daily blogfiller! Thanks, Carole. I thought it was funny the other day when old McCain accused Obama of being a Washington insider, when all along he's been saying the man from Illinois was too new and inexperienced. You can count on me to pass this valuable information along to my friends Oak, Algebra and Turf!

*Now* I understand McCain and Palin

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

* If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you're a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* If you graduate from Harvard Law, you are unstable.

* If you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black

President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible. And you try to make victimized women pay for their own rape kits.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

* If you claim to be an advocate for special needs children, and then cut the Special Olympics budget in half, you're a sensible and sensitive haaaaackey mohhhhhm.

OK, *much* clearer now.

Author unknown but deserving of a big hand!